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i 



AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH 
LITERATURE 



WORKS WRITTEN OR EDITED BY 
HENRY S. PANCOAST 

AN INTEODUOTIOIT TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 

With maps, chronological tables, and study lists of repre« 

sentative works for collateral reading. 556 pp. i6mo. 

$1.25 7iet. 

Nation : " It treats the history of English literature as closely 

connected with general history. The style is interesting, the 

conception broad and clear, the biographical details nicely sub- 

ordinated to matters more important . . . not even the dullest 

pupil can study it without feeling the historical and logical 

continuity of English literature." 

REPEESENTATIVE ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 

514 pp. Large lamo. %\.^net. 
Includes with a briefer and earlier form of the historical and 
critical matter of the Iiitroductioii the following selections 
(each complete): Chaucer: The Nonne Prestes Tale; Good 
Counseil. Spenser: Prothalamion. Shakespeare : Merchant oi 
Venice (entire). Bacon : Of Great Place; Five Elizabethan 
Songs. Milton : L' Allegro ; II Penseroso. Dryden : Song for 
St. Cecilia's Day. Addison : Ned Softly the Poet ; Sir Roger 
at Church ; The Fine Lady's Journal. Pope : The Rape of the 
Lock. Burns : Poems. Wordsivorth : Poems. Coleridge : 
Ancient Mariner. Scott: Poems. Lamb: Christ's Hospital 
Five-and-Thirty Years Ago. Byron : Poems. Keats : Poems 
Carlyle : On Robert Burns. M'acaulay : On Samuel Johnson. 
Browning : Poems. Ten7iyso7i : Poems, etc. 

STAIIDASD ENGLISH POEMS 749 pp. ^6mo. %x.sonet. 

577 pages of poetry (loo of them devoted to Victorian versel. 
containing some 250 complete poems besides selections from 
such longer ones as "The Faerie Oueene," " Childe Harold's 
Pilgrimage," etc. 163 pp. of notes'Xmainly biographical) and 
an Index. 

STANDARD ENGLISH PEOSE 676 pp. i2mo. %^.^o7iet. 

About one hundred selections (most of them complete in 
themselves) from Bacon, Walton, Sir Thomas Browne, Fuller, 
Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Cowley, Bunyan, Dryden, Defoe, Swift, 
Addison, Ste'ele, ' Johnson, "' Goldsmith, Burke, Coleridge, 
Southey, Lamb, Landor, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Carh'le, Macau- 
lay, Newman, Froude, Ruskin, Thackeray^ Matthew Arnold. 
Pater, and Stevenson, with introduction and notes. 

AN INTSODUOTION TO AMEEIOAN LITEEATUEE 

With Study lists of works to be read, references, chrono- 
logical tables, and portraits. 393 pp. i6mo. $1.00 7iet. 
This book follows the main lines of the author's "Intro- 
duction to English Literature." The special influence ofour 
history upon our literature is shown, and the attention is chiefly 
concentrated on a limited number of typical authors and 
works, treated at some length. 

HENRY HOLT & CO. "airilro" 




WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



AN INTRODUCTION 

TO 

ENGLISH LITERATURE 



BY "^ 



HENRY S. PANCOAST 

Instructor in English Literature in the De Lancey School 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1902 



^^-B^ 



.V3 



o^ 



COPTEIOHT, 1894, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO, 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRB^ 
RAHWAY, N. |. 



PEEFAOE 



This book is based upon a previous one, Bepresenv^ 
ative English Literature^ which I have enlarged in 
some directions and curtailed in others, in order to 
adapt it to somewhat different requirements. In the 
former book a series of English masterpieces was 
given in a general setting of critical and historical 
comment ; the development of the literature being 
thus shown with the aid of representative extracts 
illustrative of the successive literary epochs. Subse- 
quent experience has strengthened my confidence in 
the soundness of the principle on which that book 
was prepared, and for those who have not easy access 
to books, or who cannot conveniently obtain a number 
of separate works for class use, the insertion of the 
suggested selections is clearly an advantage. On the 
other hand, some teachers may wish to use the his- 
torical and critical portions of such a book, without 
being restricted to prescribed selections. It is in the 
hope of meeting the needs of teachers of the latter 
class, and of more advanced students, that the present 
manual has been prepared. To this end I have added 
some two hundred pages of entirely new matter, 
omitting all the selections and notes included in the 
former work. The text has thus been nearly doubled 
in length, and the book, as a whole, brought within 

iU 



IV PREFACE 

slightly smaller limits. It has still been my object to 
send the student directly to the literature itself, but 
here I have merely suggested in reading lists the 
selected works, giving them in some instances with 
general hints for study. The book is intended to be 
subordinate and supplementary to this, or some 
similar, course of study; and the text is often made 
a commentary, more or less direct, on the works given 
in the reading list which follows. I have tried to 
respect that freedom and individuality on the part of 
the teacher which I believe so essential to the best 
results, and I hope the book will be found adapted 
to other courses of study than those which I have 
given. It is not, of course, expected that in any 
case the class will read all the works suggested, but 
the lists and references have been made comparatively 
full in order to afford a greater liberty of choice. 

I have said that it has been my ambition to write 
an introduction to English literature — a book which 
shall occupy a useful, but strictly subordinate place. 
It is still my conviction that a history of English 
literature and a working hand-book, such as this 
aims to be, are two radically different things. The 
first aims to trace the growth and progress of a litera- 
iure with the primary purpose of unfolding and 
explaining the law and nature of its development. 
The second, while it has indeed this object, should 
have also another. It is primarily addressed to 
student^ and its treatment of literary history should 
be to a considerable extent determined and modified 
to meet their special needs. It should of course 
endeavor to give a true historic perspective, but 



PBEFACE V 

at the same time it should, as far as is consistent 
with this, give the largest space to those 
writers which it is most important for the 
student to study. Thus the comedies of the Restora- 
tion drama have an unquestioned rank, and a very 
positive historic significance; no history of the litera- 
ture could properly slight them, but as they could 
not be read in any preparatory school, a manual of 
literature may safely pass them over with the briefest 
mention. Other books, again, may fall outside the 
limits by reason of their length and diflScwlty. In a 
text-book the intrinsic value or historic importance 
of Bacon's Novum Organum^ or Locke's Essay on 
the Human Understanding ^ is by no means the 
single consideration, and in general we may profitably 
remember, to use Lowell's illustration, that many 
famous books, like certain Bills introduced into Con- 
gress, are merely " read by their titles and passed." 
It is quite true that such a principle of exclusion may 
become dangerous if injudiciously applied ; but its 
danger is insignificant beside the danger of compel- 
ling the student to learn by rote set criticisms on 
books he is forbidden to read, or unable to understand. 
The true object of a text-book is not to give the 
student a fictitious acquaintance with the works he 
cannot read, but to bring him into direct and sympa- 
thetic contact with those books he should learn to 
read and appreciate. Moreover the omission of a 
large number of standard authors is rendered impera- 
tive by two unavoidable conditions, the limited time 
at the command of the student, and the limited space 
at the disposal of the writer. For this reason, if for 



VI PBEFAOE 

no other, the text-book of literature must follow a 
principle of its own. If it attempts to be a mere 
history of literature in miniature, authors' names, 
dates, and titles will remain a dry insoluble 4'esiduum 
from which all tbat is helpful and vital has departed. 
I have accordingly tried to conform to the conditions 
under which I have worked, and the purpose I have 
had in view. I have omitted, as formerly, many 
writers of unquestioned standing that I might place 
before the student a few great authors and their 
works with comparative vividness and fullness. In 
the attempt to carry out such a method troublesome 
questions of judgment perpetually present themselves, 
and if I seem to have omitted what should have been 
included, or included what should have been omitted, 
I can only remind my critics of the extreme difficulty 
of the task. 

As the following works will be found useful in 
connection with the entire course of study they are 
given here in preference to inserting them in the 
study list of any special period. 

GENERAL NOTES AND REFERENCES. 

1. History. — Green's History of the English People 
will be found invaluable. Teachers are recommended 
to use this book freely, and to read, with the class, 
passages relating to literature or to social conditions. 
Knight's Pictorial History of England, Craik and 
Macfarlane's History of England. 

2. Literature, — Stopford Hvooko^s Primer of Eng* 
Ush Literature, Taine's English Literature is a 
elassic, and is brilliant and suggestive ; it should be 



PREFACE Vli 

used, however, with due allowance for its author's 
peculiar theories and for critical shortcomings. 
Two recent works of importance, adapted for 
advanced students, are A Literary History of 
the English Peojyle, by J. J. Jusserand, and A 
History of English Poetry^ by W. J. Courthope. 
Howitt's Homes and Haunts of the British Poets, 
Hutton's Literary Landmarks of London^ Hare's 
Walks About London^ Baedeker's Great Britain. 
For selections, Ward's English Poets. CI i ambers' 
Cyclopcedia of English Literature^ Craik'^s Selections 
from English Prose, Cassell's Library of English 
Literature, edited by Morley. For reference, Ry- 
lands' Chronological Outlines of English Literature, 
Phillips' Popular Manual of English Literature, 
Adams' Dictionary of English Literature, Brewer's 
Reader'' s Handbook, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase 
and Fable, Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History, 
For study lists, Welsh's English Masterpiece Course, 
Winchester's Short Courses of Beading, Hodgkin's 
Nineteenth Century Authors, 

The reproduction of the map of Shakespeare's Lon- 
don has been obtained through the kindness of 
the Philadelphia Library, and I gladly take this oppor- 
tunity of tlianking those connected with that institu- 
tion for this and many other courtesies. 

H. S. R 

Germantown, July 23, 1894. 



PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION 



In this edition critical and biographical sketches 
of Defoe, Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, and De Quincey 
have been added ; the history of the novel has been 
treated at greater length, and the sketch of Keats lias 
been entirely rewritten. 



Geemantown, August 10, 1896. 



H. S. R 



NOTE 

EECE^^T Works of Liteeary History and Criticism: 

A Short History of English Literature, by George Saints- 
bury (1898); A Short History of Modern Englisli Literature. 
by Edmund Gosse (1898); Studies in Early Victorian Litera- 
ture, by Frederic Harrison (1895); AHistory of Isineteenth Cen- 
tury Literature (1780-1895), by George Saintsbury (1896); 
Puritan and Anglican, b}^ Edward Dowden (1900); The 
Literature of the Georgian Era, by William Minto, with an 
Introduction by William Knight (1894); Scjttish Vernacular 
Literature, by T. F. Henderson (1898), and the series of 
Handbooks of English Literature edited by Professor Hales. 
In this series the history of the literature is studied by epochs, 
as The Age of Milton, by J. H. B. Masterman; The Age of 
Dry den, by Richard Garnett; The Age of Pope, by John 
Dennis; The Age of Johnson, by Thomas Seccombe; The Age 
of Wordsworth, by C. H. Herford. 

viii 



PREFACE TO THE BEYISED EDITION IX 

Conspicuous among recent works of reference are Dictionary 
of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen and by 
Sidney Lee (63 vols., 1885-1900), with three Supplementary 
vols. (1901) edited by Sidney Lee; Social England, edited by 
H. D. Traill (6 vols., 1894-1897). This book is by various 
writers and treats of the history of industry, the arts, o^ cos- 
tume, etc., from the *' earliest times" to 1885. A new edition 
of Chambers' Cyclopedia of English Literature, under the editor- 
ship of David Patrick. 



CONTEl^TS 



INTRODUCTIOJ^ 

PAGE 

What Literature is, 1 

The Great Divisions of English Literature, . . 5 

PART I 

PERIOD OF PREPARATION. 670-cir. 1400 

CHAPTER I. Race, Language, and Literature 
Before Chaucer 

Distinction between the First Period and those fol- 
lowing, 9 

The Making of the Race, 12 

Literature before the Norman Conquest, . . 21 

Revival of Learning under Alfred, ... 42 
Study List of Early Literature, , . . .46 

The Norman Conquest, . . . . . 48 

The flaking of the Language, .... 63 

Study List, Norman Conquest to Chaucer, . , 66 

CHAPTER IL Geoffrey Chaucer 

Chaucer's Century,. ...»•• 68 

Langland*s Piers Ploivman, .... 73 

Jolin Wyclif, 74 

Chaucer, 74 

Chaucer's Works, 78 

Study List, Chaucer and his Time, • • • 93 
zl 



Xii CONTENTS 

PART n 
PERIOD OF ITALIAN IISTLUENCE. Cir. 1400-1660 
CHAPTER I. The Reyival of Learning 



PAGE 

99 
104 
107 
116 
117 
123 
124 
135 
148 
149 
154 
Summary of Elizabethan Literature, , • • 160 



The Coming of the Kew Learning to England, 
Expression of the New Learning in Literature, 
Elizabethan England, .... 

Summary, 

Edmund Spenser, 

Study List, Spenser, . • . . , 
The English Drama before Shakespeare, 

Shakespeare, 

Table of Shakespeare's Works, 

Study List, Shakespeare, .... 

Francis Bacon, . . « , . 



CHAPTER II. The Puritan in Liteeatuhe 

The England of Milton, 164 

Later Elizabethan Literature, .... 169 
The Seventeenth Century Lyrists, . . . .171 
John Milton, . . • , , e 174 

Study List, Milton, ....... 187 



PABT m 

PERIOD OF FRENCH mFLUE]S"CE. 1660-cir. 1750 

The England of the Restoration, . • . . 191 

The Eighteenth Century Essays, .... 198 

Study List, Addison and Steele, „ . . . 206 

The History of the Novel, 207 



CONTENTS xiii 

PAGE 

Study List, The History of the Novel, . . .214 

Daniel Defoe, 215 

Study List, Defoe, 224 

Jonathan Swift .225 

Study List, Swift, ....... 233 

Alexander Pope, 235 

Study List, Pope, 245 

The History of the Novel {GonVd), Richardson and 
Fielding, ........ 246 

Study List, Richardson, 252 

Study List, Fielding, . . . . . . 253 



PART IV 
THE MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD. SINCE 1750 

CHAPTER I. The Beginning of Modern Literature 

Changes in Eighteenth Century England, . . 255 

Samuel Johnson, 264 

The Characteristics of the New Literature, . . 266 

Summary, 280 

Oliver Goldsmith, 282 

Study List, Goldsmith, . . . . . 291 

Edmund Burke, 292 

Study List, Burke, 300 

Robert Burns, 300 

Study List, Burns, 307 

William Wordsworth, 308 

Study List, Wordsworth, 319 

Coleridge, . . 324 

Study List, Coleridge, 336 

Sir Walter Scott, .... o .. 338 

Study List, Scott, . . , o . . 345 

Thomas De Quincey, ... . o . 346 

Study List, De Quinrpy, - . . , . 355 



XIV CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Charles Lamb, . . . . , . c c 356 

Study List, Lamb, 358 

The Later Poets of the Revolution, c . . 359 

Byron, , 361 

Study List, Byron, . , . • . . . .369 

Shelley, . . . . . . * , . 369 

Study List, Shelley, . . . . . . .377 

Keats, 378 

Study List, Keats, 392 

CHAPTER IL Receft Writers. 1830 

Victorian England, 395 

Macaulay, ........ 407 

Carlyle, . . 411 

Ruskin, . 425 

Matthew Arnold, 435 

The Growth of the Xovel, 439 

Dickens, 441 

Thackeray, 443 

, George Eliot, 446 

Recent Poetry, ....... 458 

Tennyson, ........ 462 

Browning, 482 

Study Lists and References, 497 



APPENDIX 

Tables of {At^r^rj Periods, ...•<». 507 
Index, » 537 



LIST OF POETRAITS. 



PAGB 

William Shakespeare, Frontispiece 

Geoffrey Chaucer, 68 

John Milton, 174 

JohnDryden 194 

Joseph Addison, 204 

Jonathan Swift, 226 

Alexander Pope, . 236 

Samuel Johnson, 264 

Oliver Goldsmith, 282 

Robert Burns, . 300 

Sir Walter Scott . .338 

Lord Byron, . 360 

Thomas Carlyle, . . . . . . . .412 

William Makepeace Thackeray, .... 444 

George Eliot, 453 

Alfred Tennyson, . . . . c . . 462 

MAPS. 
Norden*s Map of London in 1593, .... 112 
Literary Map of England, 583 



AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH 
LITERATURE 



INTRODUCTION 

I.-WHAT LITERATUEE IS 

The word literature is used in two distinct senses : 

(a) Its first and literal meaning is — something 
written, from the Latin, litera, a letter of the alpha- 
bet, an inscription, a writing, a manuscript, a book, 
etc. In this general sense the literature of a nation 
includes all the books it has produced, without 
respect to subject or excellence. 

(b) By literature, in its secondary and more re- 
stricted sense, we mean one especial kind of written 
composition, the character of which may be indicated 
but not strictly defined. Works of literature, in this 
narrower sense, aim to please, to awaken thought, 
feeling, or imagination, rather than to instruct : 
they are addressed to no special class of readers, and 
they possess an excellence of expression which en- 
titles them to rank as works of art. Like painting, 
music, or sculpture, literature is concerned mainly 
with feelings, and, in this, is distinguished from the 
books of knowledge, or science, whose first object is 



^ INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATUKE 

to teach facts.* Much that is literature in the 
strictest sense does deal with facts, whether of his- 
tory or of science, but it uses these facts to arouse 
the feelings or to please the imagination. It takes 
them out of a special department of knowledge and 
makes them of universal interest, and it expresses 
them in a form of permanent beauty or value. 
Shakespeare's historical plays, Carlyle's French 
Revolution^ or an essay of De Quincey or Macaulay, 
while they tell us facts, fulfill these conditions, and 
are strictly literature ; and, in general, poetry, his- 
tory, biographies, novels, essays, and the like, may 
be included in this class. It is in this stricter sense 
that we shall hereafter use the word. 

Literature is occupied chiefly with the great ele- 
mentary feelings and passions which are a necessary 
part of human nature. Such feelings 
nence and ^^ worship, love, hate, fear, ambilioUj 
universality remorse, jealousy, are common to man, 

9f literature. ri xi i ^i ^ ^ i. 

and, through them, men separated by 

education or surroundings are able to sympathize 
with or understand each other. Literature, express- 
ing and appealing to such feelings, shares in their 
permanence and universalit}^ In the poetry of the 
Persian Omar Khayyam, of the Greek Anacreon, of 

* *' To ascertain and communicate facts is the object of 
science ; to quicken our life into a higher consciousness 
through the feelings is the function of art." — *' The Scientific 
Movement and Literature," in Studies in Literature, p. 85, by- 
Edward Dowden. This distinction between literature and 
science was laid down in a famous passage of De Quincey : 
'* There is first, the literature of knowledge (i. e., science), and 



INTRODUCTION 3 

the Roman Horace, and of the English Robert Her- 
rick, we find the same familiar mood. Each is 
troubled by the pathetic shortness of human life, 
each shrinks from the thought of death and tries to 
dispel it with the half-despairing resolve to enjoy 
life while it lasts. Neither time nor place prevents 
us from entering into the work of each of these 
poets, in many respects so widely separated, because 
they express alike a common human feeling, which 
we can understand through imagination or experi- 
ence. So the (Edipus at Colonus of Sophocles and 
the King Lear of Shakespeare treat of the same ele- 
mentary feeling, the love between parent and child, 
and, while that feeling lasts, those immortal por= 
• trayals of it will be admired and understood. 

Finally, works of literature have a beauty, power, 
and individuality of expression which helps to make 

them both permanent and universal. 

T.-r 1 . 1 1-111 Literary 

JNot only is there a value m the thought style. 

or feelings contained in a literary mas- 
terpiece, there is a distinct and added value in the 
special form in which thought and feeling have been 
embodied. Each great writer has his own style or 
manner, his characteristic way of addressing us. 
This style is the expression of his personal charac- 

secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is 
to teach ; the function of the second is to mom. The first is 
a riidder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the 
mere discursive understanding ; the second speaks ultimately, 
it miy happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but 
always through affections of pleasure or sympathy." F. this 
whole passage in the essay on Alexander Pope. 



4 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATURE 

ter ; we learn to know him by it, as we recognize jl 
man by his gait or by the tones of his voice. ThiS 
personal element is another distinguishing feature of 
literature, and further separates it from science. 

Through his books a great writer expresses a part 
of his inner self. He is impelled to give us, as best 
The studv ^^^ ^^^ through written words, the most 
of English that he has gained by his experience, 
literature, j^^ ^^^ poet's verse we read the les- 
son he has learned from living ; it is warm and 
alive for all time with his sorrows, exaltations, hopes, 
or despairs. Literature is born of life, and it is in 
this sense that Milton calls a good book ^^the 
precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and 
treasured up on purpose to a life bey rd life."* 

Thus we learn to look on the works of each great 
vvriter as an actual part of a human life, mysteriously 
preserved and communicated to us. But we must go 
farther a:iid realize that each nation as well as each 
individual has a distinct character and a continuous 
inner life ; that, in generation after generation, men 
and women have lived who have embodied in litera- 
ture not their own souls merely, but some deep 
thought or feeling of their time and nation. Often 
thousands feel dumbly what the great writer 
alone is able to express. Accordingly literature is 
not vaerel J personal, but 7iational. The character of 
a nation manifested through action we commonly 
call its history; the character of a nation written 
down in its books, or throbbing in its dramas, songs, 
and ballads, we call its literature. For more than 
* Milton's Areopagitica. 



INTRODUCTION 5 

twelve hundred years the English people has been 
revealing its life, and its way of looking at life, 
through its books ; to study English literature is, 
therefore, to study one great expression of the char- 
acter and historic development of the English race. 

n.-THE QREAT DIVISIONS OF ENQLISH LITEMTUEE 
When we look at this life of the English race as 
expressed in literature through more than twelve 
centuries, we find that it possesses marked character- 
istics at certain periods. For centuries the mind of 
England is stimulated and influenced by a foreign 
civilization. The nation and its literature, like the 
individual life, pass through moods of faith and 
passion, of frivolity and unbelief. Englisli literature, 
reflecting or expressing these varied influences or 
changing moods, naturally divides itself into the fol- 
lowing four great periods of development : 

1. The Period of Preparation ; 670 to about 1400. 

2. The Period of Italian Influence ; about 1400 to 
1660. 

3. The Period of French Influence ; 1660 to about 
1750. 

4. The Modern English Period ; since about 1750. 

These divisions must be broadly laid down at the 
start, although their meaning will become plainer as 
we advance. 

I.— THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION. FROM 670 TO 
ABOUT 1400 

During this period England made for her use a 
national language. During this time, also, the vari' 



6 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ous races and tribes whose intermixture makes tke 
modern English became substantially one people. 

In order to have a great national literature it is 
necessary to have a o'reat national lano-uao-e. Such a 
language England did not always possess. The 
settlement of the island by different races or tribes, 
each haying a different speech or dialect, made Eng- 
land for centuries a land of confusion of tongues. 
The Xorman Conquest (1066) brought for a time 
another element of confusion by the introduction of 
French. During the fourteenth century the lano-uao^e 
spoken in and about London, a form of English 
largely mixed with French, asserted its supremacy. 
This English became more and more generally estab- 
lished, and from it the language we speak to-day, 
however enlarged or modified, is directly derived. 
The centuries durino- which Enodand was forming^ 
her national speech stand by themselves in the history 
of her literature. Like a child she struggles with 
the difficulties of language. Some write in one or 
another kind of English, some in Latin, some in 
French. By the end of the fourteenth century this 
difficulty is conquered; we pass out of the centuries of 
preparation into those of greater literary expression. 

II.— THE PERIOD OF ITALIAX IXFLFEXCE. FROM 
ABOUT 1400 TO 1660 

Toward the end of the fourteenth century the 
mind of Enodand begran to be sfreatly stimulated and 
directed by an influence from without. England 
began to share in the Fienaissance, or the awakening 
of the mind of Europe to a new culture, a fresh 



INTRODUCTION 7 

delight in life and in beauty, a new enthusiasm for 
freedom in thought and action. This great move- 
ment first took shape in Italy. Nation after nation 
kindled with the ardor of the new spirit, and England, 
like the rest, drew from Italy knowledge and inspira- 
tion. Education in England was transformed by 
men who learned in Florence or Bologna what they 
taught at Oxford or at Cambridge, until the New 
Learning and the new spirit found their unrivaled 
literary expression in the reigns of Elizabeth and 
James (1558-1625). 

III.— THE PERIOD OF FRENCH INFLUENCE. FROM 
1660 TO ABOUT 1750 

After the new thoughts and mighty passions that 
came with the Renaissance had spent their force, 
England seemed for the time to have grown tired 
of great feelings either in poetry or in religion. She 
became scientific, intellectual, cold, and inclined to 
attach undue importance to the style or manner of 
writing, thinking that great works were produced by 
study and art rather than by the inspiration of genius. 
This tendency was encouraged, or perhaps originated, 
by the example and influence of the French. This 
was during the brilliant reign of Louis XIV., when 
such writers as Moliere, Racine, Corneille, and Boi- 
leau, were making French literature and literary 
standards fashionable in Europe. Cliarles 11. as- 
cended the throne in 1660, after his youth of exile on 
the Continent, bringing with him a liking for things 
French, and for a while some English writers tried 
to compose according to the prescription laid down 



8 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Iby Boileau and his followers. France, however, 
exerted no such profound and lasting influence on 
English literature and thought as had been exercised 
by Italy during the period preceding. The germi- 
nating power of Italian life and culture reached far 
beyond the confines of literature ; it quickened and 
liberalized the very soul of the English nation. 
Innumerable changes in architecture, in dress, in 
gardening, were but outward demonstrations of the 
extent to which Italy had swayed England to her 
mood. Beside such a power, the succeeding influence 
of France was both superficial and restricted. It 
dealt chiefly with 8tyle^ the outward, technical side 
of the literary art ; a side in which the French excel, 
and which the English genius is prone to neglect. 

lY.— THE MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD. SINCE 
ABOUT 1750 

During this final period England outgrew her 
temporary mood of unbelief, criticism, and shallow- 
ness, and with it her reliance on the literary st^-^le of 
France. She has again expressed in her literature 
new and deep feelings, a wider love for mankind and 
a belief in the brotherhood of all men ; a new power 
of entering into the life of nature. Slie has depended 
little for her inspiration on other nations, although 
to some extent influenced by Germany and Italy, 
and has produced literary works second only to those 
of the Elizabethan masters. 

These periods, considered in detail, form respect- 
ively the subjects of the four parts into which this 
work is divided. 



PARTI 

PERIOD OF PREPARATION. 670-1400 



CHAPTER I 

EAOE, LANGUAaE, AND LITEKATUEE BEFORE CHAUOER 

When we examine the four periods into which we 

have divided the history of English literature, we 

notice that the first, or preparatory, Distinction 

period is distinsfuished from the others ^^^y®®^ }^^ 
f . ° . first period 

in one important particular. Through- and the three 

out its whole extent, or from about the lo^owing, 
seventh to the fourteenth century, England has no 
national language ; no speech common to all classes 
of the people and to all sections of the country. 
Even for the service of literature no one language is 
established, but many books are written in Latin, 
some in Norman-French, and others in different dia- 
lects of an English which seems to us almost as 
strange as a foreign tongue. 

On the other hand the three remaining periods^ 
while differing from each other in certain special 
characteristics, have at least one great feature in 
common — in them all literature has one standard or 
national language. By the beginning of the first of 
these three periods, the literary and national suprera. 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATURE 

acy of one particular variety of English was assured. 
That variety has since been the universal English 
speech ; it has remained unchanged, except by the 
gradual and natural processes of growth, from the 
time of its first great poet-master, Geoffrey Chaucer, 
to the time of Alfred Tennyson, its last. 

But while this broad distinction between the first 

and the three following periods of our literature 

^ f- -f should be grasped, it should not distract 

of the litera- our attention from the close and vital 

ture. relations which bind the preparatory 

centuries to the later time. 

The comparative richness of the literature since 
Chaucer's time, as well as the remoteness and the 
difiiculties of language which beset us before that 
period, tend to make us lose sight of the living inter- 
est and meaning of the earlier era, and its practical 
bearing on the five succeeding centuries of literary 
ja-oductron. To slight this formative period is to 
begin our biography of the nation's literature at its 
middle age. Xot only had more than half of the 
entire mental life of England been lived before 
Chaucer wrote, but for more than seven hundred years 
that life had been struo^o'liuo' more or less success- 
fully, to write itself down in literature. There is no 
break between this literature and that of which 
Chaucer has often been styled the father, and no 
development of the language should prevent our 
recognizing that the continuity of the literature 
remains unimpaired. However true or convenient 
our division of the literary liistory of England into 
set periods^ it is far more important for us to see that, 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 11 

underlying all changes, the mental life of England, 
the literature of England, which is its most direct 
expression, even the language of England, made in 
time the one medium of that literature, have a con- 
tinuous life and growth for more than twelve hun- 
dred years. In order that we may get some idea of 
the real unity running through the whole story of our 
literary development, we must indicate some of the 
ways in which the long period of growth before 
Chaucer led up to and prepared the way for the crea- 
tion of the great works which are the ^ ^ 
glories of our English speech. Look- theprepara- 
ing at this period in outline, we see that ^ory period, 
in it the way was prepared for the later literature : 

1. By the making of the Race, 

The modern English people, whose national char- 
acter English literature interprets and expresses, was 
formed during this time by the mixture of different 
race elements. 

2. By the Literature before the Norman Conquest. 

3. By the Norman Conquest^ with its far-reaching 
effects on race, literature, and language. 

4. By the making of the Language out of the 
combination of different tongues. 

We thus see that on every side the characteristic 
of this preparatory period was the progress toward 
unity ^ by the absorption and combination of separate 
dements. One race is made by the fusion of many ; 
one language by the amalgamation of French and 
English ; one literature out of the literature of the 
English, the British, and the Norman, enriched and 
developed by the learning and culture of Rome. 



12 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEB 

I. THE MAKING OF THE RACE. 

The races which have combined in different pro- 
portions to make the modern English are : 

a. Tlie English^ or Anglo-Saxons ; a people be- 
longing to the Teutonic stock or group of races. 

5. The Britons^ from whom the TFe/sA are de- 
scended ; a people belonging to the Celtic stock. 

c. The Danes ; a people, like the English^ of the 
Teutonic group. 

d. The Normans^ or Northmen^ a people originally 
Teutonic by blood, but with some Celtic intermixture. 

Thus we see that representatives of two great 
divisions of the Aryan people have entered at various 
times into the composition of the English, viz.: the 
Teuton and the Celt.^ 

The English settlers of Britain were Low German 

tribes, resembling in language, and to some extent 

«,, ^ ,. ,- ill character, their neis^hbors the Fris- 
The English. . . \ ^ f , , 

lans, the modern Dutch, to whom they 

* The following table of the principal European branches of 
the Aryan family will make the precise position of the English 
and Britons plainer ; 

ARYAN 



Eastern Classic Celtic Teutonic. Sciavonians 

Branch. Group. Grmp. (Russians) 

Hindoo Greek popiip ^ Irish Goths 

i'^jrsian Roman ^*«^^^ ( Scotch Scandinavians 

r Britons (Normans origmaUy 

,>_ . Breton or "^^'^r® mainly from 

Cy°^^^ ^ A^'i'ric'ans Hi5J,V'l°r?^L, 

ftflnlc High Germans 

^ LGauls Low Germans 



Frisian Engl ish 
(Dutch) T i 



Angles Jutes Saxons 



LITEEATUBE BEFORE CHAUCER 13 

were closely related by blood. Two of the three 
English tribes, the Saxons and the Angles, came from 
what is now the Schleswig-Holstein provinces of 
Northern Germany, the country about the mouth of 
the river Elbe, which lies to the north of Holland. 
The third tribe, the Jutes, held that peninsula yet 
farther northward which is now part of Denmark. 
This early home of the English, with its harshness, 
gloom, and privations, was a land to breed men. 
Fierce storms beat down upon it, and often in the 
spring and autumn the sea swept over its sunken, 
muddy coasts, flooding it far inland. Dismal cur- 
tains of fog settled over it ; its miles of tangled 
forests were soaked and dripping with frequent rains. 
The other home of the English was the sea. The 
eldest son succeeded to his father's lands ; as soon as 
the younger sons grew old enough they took to the 
war-ships to win fame and plunder by slaughter and 
pillage. Their high-prowed galleys were a menace 
and a terror to the richer coast settlements far south- 
ward, and prayers were regularly offered in some 
churches for a deliverance from their fury. Swift 
in pursuit, quick and merciless in attack, they were 
swift also in flight. Fair-haired, blue-eyed men, big- 
boned and muscular, they combined an heroic fear- 
lessness and audacity with a savage bloodthirstiness 
and greed. The healthy animal was yet strong in 
them ; they were huge feeders and deep drinkers. 
Yet they were a young race with stores of unwasted 
vigor; with an immense, if brutal, energy; with an 
enormous and unspent capacity for life, for feeling, 
for thought, for action. To understand them we 



14 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

must penetrate beneath tne surface of riot and blood- 
shed to the redeeming and noble traits which lay, vet 
undeveloped, at the base of the national character. 

Beside the moral corruption of the decaying 
Roman civilization, their lives stood sound and pure. 
While they showed no tendency to romantic sen- 
timent, women were given a higli and honorable 
place among them. The passion of love may be 
said to have no place in their literature. One brief 
strain of love is indeed heard in it, but it is in cele- 
bration of the assured and domestic affection of the 
wife, not of the ecstasy of a youthful sentiment. It 
is the poem of the English fireside. 

*' Dear the welcomed one 
To the Frisian wife, when the Floater 's drawn on shore, 
When his keel comes back, and her churl returns to home, 
Hers, her own food-giver. And she prays him in, 
Washes then his weedy coat, and new weeds puts on him. 
Oh, lythe - it is on land to him, whom his love constrains." f 

We find, too, in the early English, that instinct 
for law and freedom which in the coming genera- 
tions was to build parliaments and create republics. 
They had no less that splendid seriousness, that 
reverence for life and death, that profoundly re- 
ligious spirit which animates and inspires the 
greatest productions of English literature. In spite 
of all their delight in the joy of battle, in spite of 
their feasting and drunken revelry, there runs 

* Lythe, pleasant, soft. 

f Stopf ord Brooke's translation in History of Early English 
Literature, 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 15 

through their poetry the persistent undertone of a 
settled melancholy. They look death steadily in the 
face as " the necessary end" ; they are continually 
impressed by the sense of the power of fate against 
which the weapons of the warriors are idle. 

" One shall sharp hunger slay ; 
One shall the storms beat down ; 
One shall be destroyed by darts ; 
One die in war ; 
One shall live losing 
The light of his eyes, 
Feel blindly with fingers ; 
And one, lame of foot, 
With sinew-wound wearily 
Wasteth away, 
Musing and mourning 
With death in his mind." * 

Again and again the same haunting thought recurs, 
put forth with no outburst of complaint, but with a 
stoical and unflinching acceptance. 

*' All the realm of earth is full of hardship, 
The world 'neath Heaven is turned by Fate's decree." \ 

In another poem we are forced to descend into the 
very grave and watch the dust return to dust.J 

Yet this haunting sense of the shortness of life did 
not produce in the early English the determination 
to enjoy to-day. Living in the rush of battle and 

* ''The Fortunes of Man/* Morley's translation, English 
Writers, vol. ii. p. 33. 

f The Wanderer. See preface to Cynewulf 's Christ, Goliancz' 
translation. 

X The Grave, a characteristic poem. See Study List, p. 47 



16 INTKODUCllON TO ENGLISH LITEEATUBE 

tempest, it rather stimulated them to quit themselves 
as heroes. The English conscience speaks in such 
lines as these : 

" This is best laud from the living 
In last words spoken about him : 
He worked ere he went his way, i 

When on earth, against wiles of the foe, 
With brave deeds overcoming the devil." * 

In these early English we recognize those great traits 
of mind and character which have continued to ani- 
mate the race ; traits which in the centuries to come 
were to take shape in the deeds of heroes and the 
songs of poets. In these half-savage pirate tribes, 
with their deep northern melancholy, is the germ of 
that masterful and aggressive nation Avhich was to 
put a girdle of English round the world. Of their 
blood are the sea-dogs who chased the towering gal- 
leons of the Spanish Armada, the six hundred who 
charged to death at Balaclava, or those other Eng- 
lish, our own forefathers, who declared and main- 
tained their inheritance of freedom. The spirit of 
this older England, enriched by time, is alive, too, in 
the words of Shakespeare, of Milton, and of Brown- 
ing, as it is in the deeds of Raleigh, of Chatham, and 
of Gordon. 

When the English began to settle in Britain, about 
the middle of the fifth century, the island was occu- 
pied by tribes of a people called Celts. 
The Celts. £■ ; . .1 • i. i^ 

In early times this race held a great 

part of Western Europe as well as the British Isles, 

*** The Seafarer." Morley's translation, English Writers., 
vol. ii. p. 24. 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 17 

until conquered or pushed aside by the Teutonic 
races, the group to which the English belong. Scot- 
land and Ireland were occupied by one great division 
of the Celts, the Gaels, and what is now England by 
another, the Cyniri, or, as we commonly call them, 
the Britons. The Celts were a very different race 
from the Teutons, and the Britons were as thoroughly 
Celtic in their disposition as the English were 
Teutonic. For more than fourteen hundred years 
Celt and Teuton have dwelt together in England, 
for while the Britons were driven westward by the 
English, they were far from being exterminated, and 
in certain sections these two races have blended into 
one. This mixture of the races has been greatest in 
the north and west ; for instance, in such counties 
as Devon, Somerset, Warwick, and Cumberland* 
From the mixed race thus formed, a race which com- 
bined the genius of two dissimilar and gifted peoples, 
many of the greatest poets of England have sprung. 
Indeed it may be truly said, that English literature 
is the expression and outcome, not of the English 
race and character alone, but of that character modi- 
fied and enriched by the Celt, Xot only has the 
Celtic blood thus mingled wath the English. Celtic 
poetry and legend have furnished subject and inspira- 
tion to English writers down to our own day. It is, 
therefore, important for us to gain some notion of 
the Celtic as well as of the early English spirit, for 
in the literature of England we recognize the pres- 
ence of both. 

The Britons, like the English, were a huge and 
powerful race ; they had fierce gray or bluish eyes, 



18 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and light or reddish hair. Wild as they seemed l)e* 
fore they lost their native vigor under 
the Roman rule, they had a natural vein 
of poetry and sentiment more pathetic and delicate 
than the somewhat prosaic and stolid English. They 
were quick-witted, unstable, lacking the English 
capacity for dogged and persistent effort, easily 
depressed and easily exalted, quickly sensitive to 
romance, to beauty, to sadness. Beside the stern 
and massive literature of the early English, with its 
dark background of storm and forest, with its resolu- 
tion and its fatalism, with the icy solitude of its 
northern ocean, stands that of the Celt, bright as 
fairy-land with gorgeous colors and the gleam of 
gold and precious stones, astir with the quick play 
of fancy, enlivened by an un-English vivacity and 
humor, and touched by an exquisite pathos. Here is 
the description from one of the Celtic romances of a 
young knight going out to seek his fortune : 

" And the youth pricked forth upon a steed with head dap- 
pled gray, of four winters old, firm of limb, with shell-formed 
hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold on his head, and on him 
a saddle of costly gold. And in the youth's hand were two 
spears of silver, sharp, well-tempered, headed with steel, three 
ells in length, of an edge to wound the wind and cause blood 
to flow, and swifter than the fall of the dewdrop from the 
blade of reed grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at 
the heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was upon his thigh, the 
blade of which was of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of 
the hue of the lightning of heaven ; his war horn was of 
ivory. Before him were two brindled, white-breasted grey- 
hounds, having strong collars of rubies about their necks^ 
reaching from the shoulder to the ear. And the one that was 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 19 

on the left side bounded across to the right side, and the 
one on the right to the left, and like two sea swallows 
sported round him. 

And the blade of grass bent not beneath hira, so light was 
his step as he journeyed toward the gate of Arthur's palace." * 

The familiar figure of the young man going forth 
to conquer the world in the strength of his youth, is 
here emblazoned with all the glowing colors, the 
delicate fancy of the Celtic genius. 

Or take the following as an illustration of the 
Celtic sentiment and Celtic love of nature ; 

** The maiden was clothed in a robe of flame-colored silk, 
and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were 
precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than 
the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the 
foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers 
than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of 
the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the 
glance of the three-mewed falcon, was not brighter than 
hers. Whoso beheld her was filled with her love; four 
white trefoils sprung up where'er she trod."f 

And finally, as an example of the Celtic humor, 
add the picture of another maiden as a study of the 
grotesque : 

'*And thereupon they saw a black curly-headed maiden 
enter, riding upon a yellow mule, with jagged thongs in her 
hand to urge it on, and having a rough and hideous aspect. 
Blacker were her face and her hands than the blackest iron 
covered with pitch, and her hue was not more frightful than 

* " Kilhwch and Olwen/' Guest's Mahinogion, p. SJ9. 
t76ee?., p. ^33. 



20 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

her form. High cheeks had she and a face lengthened down 
ward and a short nose with distended nostrils. And one eye 
was of a piercing mottled gray, and the other was black as 
jet, deep sunk in her head. And her teeth were long and 
yellow, more yellow were they than the flower of the 
broom ... and her figure was very thin and spare except 
her feet, which were of huge size." * 

AVhile the early English had certain great traits 
of character which were lacking in the Celt — the 
genius for governing, steadfastness, earnestness — the 
Celt was strong w^iere the English were deficient. 
The mingling of these races, therefore, during the 
long period before the outburst of literature in the 
fourteenth century, was an important element in the 
unconscious preparation for the latter time. We 
can better understand this by remembering that 
William Shakespeare, the greatest genius of the 
modern world^, w^as born in a district where the mix- 
ture of these two races was especially great, and 
that by inheritance, as by the quality of his genius, 
we may think of him as the highest example of this 
union of Celt and Teuton. "It is not without 
significance that the highest type of the race, the 
one Englishman who has combined in the largest 
measure the mobility and fancy of the Celt with the 
depth and energ}^ of the Teutonic temper, Avas born 
on the old Welsh and English border-land in the 
forest of Arden." f 

* " Story of Peredur," Mabinogioriy Guest's edition, 114. 

f J. R. Green, quoted in article on '* Shakespeare," Encydo* 
pcBdia Britannica, ninth edition, by Prof. T. Spencer Baynes, 
which consult on this subiect. 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 21 

II. LITERATURE BEFORE THE NORMAN 
CONQUEST 

To this preparation by the making of the race 
must be added the expanding and deepening of the 
English nature, which, taught by experience, refined 
and spiritualized by Christianity and by Latin cuL 
ture, labored to embody its widening ideas of life in 
some literary form. To realize the part played by 
Christianity in the development of English literature 
we must go back to the preceding centuries of 
heathenism. 

Like the early Greeks and other primitive races, 
the English had created a body of poetry and myth 
long before tliey were able to give it a y&tIy Ene- 
written form. Their imagination had lish heathen- 
peopled the world about them with ^^^' 
indwelling powers ; the giant of the forest, the dwarf 
of the mine, Nicor the water-sprite, whose name 
survives in the nixies of popular song and legend. 

Their religion seems to have been that of the 
Scandinavian, impressive in its vast and rough-hewn 
majesty. Crude, gigantic shapes loom up through 
this Teutonic mythology as through a cloud : 
Woden, the father of the gods ; Thor, with h'fi 
mighty hammer, the god of thunder and of tei^ 
pest ; Saxneat, the god of war ; and Tiw, the sword 
god, a fierce and terrible power whom none could 
encounter and live. Among these are gentler 
divinities, often personifying the creative and benef- 
icent forces of nature arrayed against the destruc- 
tive and warring powers of cold, darkness, and storm ; 
Frea, th^ divinity of joy, warnithy au4 harvests ; the 



22 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

radiant and gracious Balder, the sun god ; Eostre, the 
remnant of a yet earlier mythology, the shining 
goddess of springtime and dawn, from whose name 
our Easter is taken. Back of all these is Wyrd, 
.Destiny, including in one person the three attributes 
Past, Present, and Future, embodiment of that 
ingrained northern fatalism which has been already 
spoken of as a primary English trait.* Beowulf, the 
hero of our oldest English epic, is true to the spirit 
of his race, when lie cries before his last fight, ^^ To 
us it shall be as our Wyrd betides, that Wyrd is 
every man's lord."f 

Side by side with these early myths and popular 
fancies was poetry, here, as among other primitive 
races, the handmaid of religion and of history. It 
is to poetry that the great races turn in their child- 
hood by a deep universal instinct, when they would 
give vent to their primal passions — joy, suffering, or 
the lust of battle. We may picture the English, like 
their German kindred, working themselves up to a 
frenzied joy in slaughter before rushing into action, 
by chanting wild and discordant hymns to the god 
of battles. J 

* In the Scandinavian mythology these three attributes of 
Fate were separate persons. Urd (hence the English Wyrd), 
the Past, Werdaudi, the Present, and Skuld, the Future. 
These three Fatal Sisters wove the web of human destiny. 
Gray's poem, The Fatal Sisters, may be read in class. 
Discuss also possible connection of the Nornes with the weird 
sisters or witches of Macbeth, for which see Academy 
(February 8, 1879) ; Dyer's Folk. Lore of Shakespeare, p. 27. 

\ Beowulf, 1. 2525. 

X " A peculiar kind of verses is also current among them, by 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 23 

In the midst of this turbulent, pitiless world of 

the early English, with its plundering, wasting, and 

burninffs, stands the ficrure of the poet. 

TT • T * XT 1 1, r The Scop. 

He IS the scop,* the maker or shaper of 

song ; perhaps the servant of some great household, 
perhaps a wandering singer, a welcome guest at 
feasts. Enter in imagination one of tlie great halls 
on a night of feasting, if you would know what the 
scop was in that rude society. At one end sits the 
king, on a high platform ; fires are blazing on the 
stone flagging along the center, lighting up the gold- 
woven tapestries, and glittering on helmet and 
buckler hanging on the walls. At the two tables 
which run lengthwise of the hall sit the warriors, 
eating boar's flesh and venison, and in the midst, 
while a thegn carries round the drinking cups of ale 

the recital of which, termed * barding,' they stimulate their 
courage, while the sound itself serves as an augury of the 
event of the impending combat. For, according to the nature 
of the cry proceeding from the line, terror is inspired or felt ; 
nor does it seem so much an articulate song as the wild 
chorus of valor. A harsh, piercing note, and a broken roar 
are their favorite tones, which they render more full and 
sonorous by applying their mouths to their shields." — Tacitus, 
Germania, ch. 8, Oxford translation. 

* Scop, from A. S. scieppan, to make or create ; creation 
being generally recognized as the supreme faculty of the 
poet ; V. note on trouvere, p. 104. Among the early English 
the gleeman occupied an inferior place, as the singer, rather 
than the composer, of verses. Gomenicudu and gleobeam were 
the names of the harp ; gleoman, or gleeman, of the harper. 
The gleeman also performed juggling or acrobatic feats in 
very early times. The relative position of scop and gleemar 
correspond somewhat to that of trouvere and jongleur. 



24 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LXTERATURE 

and mead, the gleeraan sings of the deeds of heroes, 
marking the beats of his rude chanting by chords 
struck upon the harp. By his life, given to song, he 
stands apart from all the rest ; the special represent- 
ative of mind in the midst of brute force, the fore- 
runner of that great world power we call literature. 
But the scop, or gleeman, was not the only singer at 
feasts ; often the harp was passed from hand to hand, 
and king and thegn sang in turn, or some hoary war- 
rior told of the battles of his youth.* Thus in battle- 
hymn or dirge, in hero songs, iu gnomic or proverbial 
verses, we find the half-fc^rgotten beginnings of 
English literature. Songs were common property. 
Passed on from one singer to another, altered or 
enlarged at pleasure, they grew by frequent repeti- 
tion, while their origin and the name of the poet who 
first sung them was often uncared for and unknown. 

Two very early poems, perhaps of continental 
origin,^ Widsith, or the Fa?* Wanderer^ and the 
Complaint of Deoi\\ deal with the life and for^ 
tunes of the scop. 

The first of these has little poetic merit, 1>at 
deserves mention as containing passages thought to 
be the earliest remainino: specimens of 
Anglo-Saxon verse. W idsith, a scop, 
enumerates the various courts at which he has beeii 
received in his wandering singer's life, and tells o) 
the rich gifts that have been given him for his songs. 
He seems to have been popular, as he shows us only 

* Beowulf, 1. 496 ; ^. also Bedels Ecclesiastical History. 
story of Csedmon. 
f TRUslated by E. H. Hickej iu the Academy, May i^, JS§i, 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 25 

the briglit side of the poet's life, dwelling on the 
liberality of his hearers and the widespread appre- 
ciation of song. The Complaint of Deor^ on the 
other hand, brings before us the scop in misfortune. 
Deor was not an itinerant singer ; he belonged to a 
special household and was dear to his lord, until dis- 
placed by a rival whose songs found greater favor. 
Deor tries to reconcile himself to this by calling to 
mind the many wise and good who have endured 
sorrow. 

We should gain nothing by a mere enumeration of 
other minor poems of this period. It is enough to 
say here that they deserve to be read by every 
serious student of our literature, if only for one 
reason : They come into the midst of our nineteenth 
century from a world that lies buried under the dust 
and tramplings of twelve centuries. Read with that 
deep human sympathy by which alone we can truly 
decipher the records of any past, we can find, beneath 
all that overkiys it, the breath of life. 

Among these early poems, Beoioulf, the oldest 

epic of any Germanic people, containing over three 

thousand lines * stands alone in magni- ,, 

^ , T . mi X. T "Beowulf." 

tude and importance. J lie scene oi the 

poem is laid on the continent, probably in Denmark. 

The date of its composition is doubtful, but scholars 

have shown, from certain historical allusions, that the 

* According to the former manner of printing it, Beowulf 
contained over six thousand lines {dr. 6365). The poem, which 
is in the usual Anglo-Saxon meter, is written in half-lines^ 
each having two strongly-marked accents. These linlf-imcs 
being formerly printed as separate lines, the number of li^'^^ 
Wfts apparently double4. 



26 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

events related must have taken place between th« 
early part of the sixth and the middle of the eighth 
century.* Its author is unknown. Beowulf may 
have originated on the continent shortly before the 
English invasion of Britain ; and, carried from thence 
to England, have grown gradually by oral repetition 
until some Christian singer, perhaps a Northumbrian 
monk of the eighth century, gave it final form. The 
note of the poem is strife. Not the onset of armies, 
nor the wrestling against flesh and blood, but the 
sinHe-handed struofHe of Beowulf with three mon- 
strous and mysterious incarnations of the powers of 
evil. Around these three combats of Beowulf the 
action of the poem centers. Hrothgar, a Danish 
king, builds for himself a splendid mead-hall, Heorot, 
wherein he sits feasting with his thegns. A fiendisli 
monster, Grendel, lurking in the dark marshes with- 
out, is tortured by the sounds of minstrelsy that 
reach him from the hall. In jealous hate he enters 
Heorot by night and slays thirty sleeping com- 
panions of the king. Again and again he comes to 
destroy, until the splendid hall has to be forsaken. 
After twelve years Beowulf, a prince of the Geats, or 
Goths, endowed with the strength of thirty men, 
comes Avith his followers in a ship to rid Hrothgar of 
this scourge. He is made welcome, and that night 
he and his band occupy the hall. All are asleep save 
Beowulf, when Grendel strides into the hall, his eyes 
glowing like flames. He snatches a warrior, rends 
him to pieces, and greedily devours him. Then he 
attacks Beowulf and they close in deadly grapple, the 

*/. e,, not earlier than 511-512 a, p., nor later than 753 A. P 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 27 

hero using no weapon, but trusting solely in his 
mighty strength. The stanch liall trembles with 
the fierceness of the contest ; the massive benches 
are splintered, the Danes stand around, panic- 
stricken. Then Grendel, howling, strives to escape, 
but Beowulf crushes him witli his terrible hand-grip. 
At length the demon, with the loss of an arm, 
wrenches himself free, and flies to the fens to die. 
On the morrow all crowd round Beowulf rejoicing, 
but the next night Grendel's motlier comes to avenge 
her son, and carries off one of the thegns. Beowulf 
resolves to conquer this new foe. With his thegns 
he tracks the woman fiend over murky mooi's, through 
rocky gorges, and by the haunts of the water nixies, 
until he comes upon a stagnant popi, frothing with 
blood and overhung by gloomy trees. By night the 
waters are livid with fiame. The deer, pursued by 
dogs, will die on the bank rather than tempt those 
unsounded depths. It is a place of terror. Beowulf 
plunges in and fights the water fiend in her cave 
under the flood. His sword proves useless against 
her. Again he trusts to sheer strength. ^'So it 
behoves a man to act when he thinks to attain endur- 
ing praise ; — he will not be caring for his life." * 
Beowulf falls, and the fiend is above him, her knife 
drawn. Then the hero snatches from a pile of arms 
a mighty sword, giant-forged, and slays his adver- 
sary. Again there is mirth and praise at Heorot. 

In the last part of the poem Beowulf has become 
King of the Goths and has ruled over them for fifty 
winters. At this time the land is worried by a 

* Beowulf, p. 50, Earle's translation. 



28 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

dragon, who sets men's homes aflame with his fiery 
breath. The dragon's lair is near a wild headland 
at whose front the sea breaks ; here Beowulf seeks 
him and gives battle, trusting '^ in the strength of 
his singrle manhood." The old kinof is aofain victori- 
ous, but is mortally hurt. He bids a follower bring 
out the dragon's treasure hoard, and as the glisten- 
ing gold and jewels are spread on the grass, he gives 
thanks that he has won them for his people. So 
Beowulf dies, and a lofty mound is raised in his 
honor on the high cliff, which sailors, in voyaging 
upon the deep, could behold from far. The poem 
ends in a requiem of praise : 

** Lamented thus 
The loyal Goths, 
Their cbieftain's fall. 
Hearth-fellows true ;— 
They said he was, 
Of all kings in the worlds 
Mildest to his men 
And most friendly, 
To bis lieges benignest, 
And most bent upon glory."* 

Something of the poem's spirit makes itself felt 

even through this meager summary. We catch 

something of its profound earnestness. 

Spirit of the j^g o-loom, its simple-minded intensitv. 
poem. o 7 i 

Beowulf, the one central figure, moves 

before us in heroic proportions. In his courtesy, his 

vast strength, his quiet courage, his self-reliance, his 

submission to fate, he may stand as the pattern of the 

early English ideal of manhood, as Achilles of th<* 

* Earle's translation. Introduction, Ixxiii. 



LITERATUKE BEFORE CHAUCER 29 

aarly Greek. The story is relieved by few gentler 
touches. As a background to this life of conflict, 
nature rises before us, harsh, somber, pitiless, alive 
with superstitious terrors, dreary amid the remoteness 
and savagery of the northern solitudes. The pre- 
vailing gloom is unbroken by color, or laughter, or 
the gracious happiness of lovers. The lighted mead- 
hall, indeed, echoes with song and cheer, but about 
it lie the black wastes, the haunt of demons. Such 
a tone suits best with the unflinching courage, the 
uncompromising morality, which thrill through the 
poem. Life may not be a pleasant thing ; it may be 
made a noble thing. " He who has the chance should 
work mighty deeds before he die ; that is for a 
mighty man the best memorial."* The ideal em- 
bodied in the life of this early English hero antici- 
pates by a thousand years the spirit of the noble 
precept of the great Puritan : 

"Nor love thy life, nor hate ; but what thou liv'st, 
Live well ; how long or short permit to Heaven." f 

Courage, fortitude, self-sacrifice, these things are 
preferred to the pleasures of the senses, even to life 
itself. Even in these bitter times of robbery and 
murder, the English nature could at least perceive, in 
all its difficult austerity, a fundamental principle of 
all noble living. Such stuff was there in the English 
even while they were yet heathen. 

For we are to remember that, notwithstanding some 
Christian passages of a later date, these earliest poems 

* Beowulf, 11. 1387-1890. 

f Paradise Lost. bk. xi. I. 553. 



30 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUKE 

are essentially the utterance of a heathen people. 
Hesthe el These barbarians, too, faced nature, and 
mentin early life, and death, wonderingly but fearless- 
poe.-^L*?. ]y^ ^i^g ^j^ questions of humanity deep in 

their hearts. Reading their poems, we can under- 
stand how that heathen Earldorman of Northumbria 
•came to liken man's life to a spaiTow, coming from 
the blank darkness which walls us in to tarry but for 
a little in the warmth of a lighted hall, and then 
vanish again into the darkness and be lost.* 

In characters so strong and serious Christianity 
became a vital force, directing the currents not only 
of life, but of thought and of literature. Accord- 
ingly the bringing of this heathen England within 
the circle of Christendom makes an epoch in the his- 
tory of English literature. 

For a century and a half after the first English 
occupation, Britain lay a wedge of heathendom be- 
tween Christian Europe and Christian 

Conversion of ji-eiand. The civilization and culture of 

the English. 

Europe were mainly Roman ; the guard- 
ian of this culture was the Church. To be heathen 
was, therefore, to be cut off from the main source of 
education, to be shut out from the intellectual life of 
the time. During the sixth and seventh centuries 
light streamed into this darkened Britain from the 
east and from the west. In 597 St. Augustine 
planted the Church in Kent, the interrupted commu- 
nication between Rome and Britain was re-estab- 

* Bede's Ecde^astical Hist 0?^}/, bk. ii. chap, xiii., or Green's 
English People, vol. i. p. 46. V. also Wordsworth's render- 
ing of this. Ecclesiastical Sonnets, part i. son. xvi- 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 81 

lished, and Canterbury became the first great cent-er 
in England of Latin learning and influence. 

While the Roman Church in Kent strove with but 
little lasting success to win the remoter English king- 
doms to the faith, the impassioned zeal of Irisli mis- 
sionaries wrought in the north what the followers of 
St. Augustine had failed to accomplish. Aidan, the 
first of these, came into Northumbria from the Irish 
mission station at lona (635). English paganism 
gave way before Celtic enthusiasm and devotion, and 
the tide or Irish Christianity spread slowly south- 
ward. While the light was thus shining from the 
west, three men landed in Britain (668), bringing 
from the far east a culture higher than any the Eng- 
lish liad yet known. These were Theodore of Tarsus, 
(602-670), who had studied Greek at Athens ; Bene- 
dict Biscop or Baducing (cir. 628-670), a Xorth- 
umbrian of noble birth, returning from his second 
journey to Rome, and Adrian or Hadrian, an Afri- 
can monk. By their learning and devotion these 
three great teachers may be said to have created in 
England a new life of the intellect. They carried 
the precious learning of the Eastern Empire, then 
almost extinct in Western Europe, into the savagerj 
of an island on the marorin of Christendom. Throuofh 
them there arose amid the solitudes of fenland or 
forest the walls of the monastic schools. Greek, 
practically lost to Western Europe from the fifth to 
the fifteenth century, was taught in seventh century 
England, and Theodore's pupils read the very words 
of Homer. Under Hadrian the school at Canterbury 
became the nursery of the new culture, while in 



32 INTEODUCnON TO ENGLISH LlTERATtRE 

Xorthumbria, near Jarrow, on the banks of the Tyne. 
Biscop set the twin schools of St. Peter and St. Paul 
(674-679), revisiting Rome to procure for them a 
priceless store of manuscripts. Under the combined 
stimulus of Christianity and Latin culture, literature 
burst into life. At the monastery of TThitby 
founded by Aidan, on a bleak headland of the Xorth- 
umbrian coast, "^ Caedmon chants his Paraphrase or 
the Scriptures [cir. 670) the first Eiiglish poem un- 
questionably native to English soil. At the monas- 
tery of Jarrow, B^da or Bede (6 73-735), a pupil of 
Biscop's, became one of the greatest teachers and 
prose writers of his time, while Aldhelm (656-709), 
who represents the scholarship and poetry of South- 
ern England, as Bede does that of the Xorth, comes 
from Malraesbury, a monastery which tlie Irish had 
founded, f to study under Hadrian at Canterbury. 
The birthplace of English literature in England is 
thus \vithin the shadow of the CJiurch. For centu- 
ries its history centers about monasteries such as 
those which Biscop planted ; quiet strongholds and 
retreats where poet, chronicler, and teacher, nourished 

*The spot is thus graphically described by Green : " As we 
look over the wide stretch of country whose billowy swells 
and undulations lift themselves dark at eventide from the 
mist veil that lies white around them, we see again the waste 
in which Hild reared her home, its gray reaches of desolate 
water skimmed but by the white wings of gull or albatross, its 
dark tracts of desolate moor silent save for the wolf's howl or 
eagle's scream." — Making of England, p. 368. 

f Founded by Maidulf, an Irish scholar, shortly after 658.— 
Green's Making of England, p. 339. 



LITEKATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 33 

on some fragments of past learning, were sheltered 
from the coarse violence without. 

The rapidity with which the new religion trans- 
formed barbarians into saints and scholars bears 

witness, not only to the power of Christi- „ ,. . 

^ »^ ^ ^ xleligious m^ 

anity and culture, but also to the reli- stinct in the 
gious temper and inlierent capacity of the y^^^ ^^^' 
English mind. In less than a century 
an unlettered and heatlien people became, under 
these influences, the intellectual leaders and teachers 
of Western Europe. From the last quarter of the 
seventh to the beginning of the eighth century, 
while Europe was a chaotic sea of contention, the 
lamp of literature and learning shone from England 
with a single and solitary radiance. 

In England itself, while learning flourished in Kent 
and Wessex, Northumbria held the intellectual and 
literary, as she had held the political j.. 
supremacy. There, where the best that premacy of 
Irish zeal and scholarship could give Northumbria. 
was mingled with the choicest learning of the East, 
we find Csedmon and Bede ; there, we conjecture^ 
was the home of the poet Cynewulf, who has left us 
but his works and his name ; there, too, was Alcuin 
{cir, 735-804), who brought from his school at York 
the learning of Northumbria to the service of Charle- 
magne.* 

* Stubbs and others point out the importance of Northum- 
brian scholarship to European civilization. '* It may be said 
that the civilization and learning of the eighth century rested 
on the monastery which he (Biscop) founded, which produced 
Bede, and through him, the school of York, Alcuin, and the 



84 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

The beautiful story of Csedmon, our earliest poet, 

is told us by Bede, our first great writer of prose. 

Caedmon, at first a dependent and after- 
Caedmon. « ^ 

ward a monk at the monastery of St. 

Hilda at Whitby, is brought before us as one to 
whom poetry came as the gift of Heaven. Unable 
to sing the heathen war-songs of the past, a stranger 
appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to 
sing ^' in praise of the creation." Whereupon he 
began to sing those verses " in praise of God, the 
Creator of all things " which are the first notes of the 
great antiphon of English poetry. When the abbess 
heard of this she had Casdmon taught all the Bible 
narrative, and he, ruminating on what he heard, 
turned the most striking portions into verse, para- 
phrasing in this way much of the books of Genesis and 
Exodus, and '^ many other histories of Holy Writ." 

Bede says that others after Caedmon " tried to 
make'religious poems. " From this Caedmon appears to 
have been the founder of a school of religious verse. 
There has been much discussion over the author- 
ship of the paraphrases formerly attributed to Caed- 
mon. They are now generally believed to be the 
work of different and unknown authors, but a few 
critics still think that a part of tlie paraphrase of 
Genesis may possibly be his. Leaving these con- 
troversies to the experts, let ul look briefly at the 
poems themselves. 

The Paraphrase is in the usual Anglo-Saxon 

Carolingian school on which the culture of the Middle Ages 
was based." — Stubbs, Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biog- 
raphy, vol. 1. p. 309. 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 36 

measure of Beowulf^ with the compressed style and 
the inverted construction which mark Csedmon's 
the early English verse. It is without " ^^^^P^"® " 
rhyme, relying solely on accent and alliteratioTiy 
according to the practice of the Anglo-Saxons. In 
subject and in spirit only, it is a departure from the 
heathen war-song. It is the song of a Christian scop, 
showing the grafting of new elements upon an 
ancient stock. The Creation, the Fall of Man, the 
Flood, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Passage of the Red 
Sea, and other parts of the Bible story, are told 
rapidly and simply, but with touches of that vivid 
definiteness which shows the true poet's gift of seeing. 
When we are told that the raven sent out from the 
Ark, "perched exultingly on the floating corpses," 
or when Abram, looking back, sees the " white-tur- 
reted habitations of the Egyptians glitter brightly in 
the sun," one stroke creates the picture. The story 
is Oriental, but the tone is English, for events are 
seen in the light of the poet's own experience. Satan's 
followers are bound to him by the same ties of grat- 
itude and allegiance as those which united the Eng- 
lish thegns to their lord ; the sons of Reuben are 
styled " sea- vikings." The very pains of hell suggest 
the rigors of a frigid clime : 

*' Then cometh the dawn 
The Eastern wind, 
Frost bitter cold 
Ever fire or dart." * 

The poet of the barren North recurs with a touch- 

* Thorpe's translation, iv. 1. 26. In this translation the half- 
lines are printed and numbered as separate lines ; v. note on p. 
25 siipra. 



36 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ing frequency to the greatness and fertility of the 
earth : 

** The green earth 
Which was with waters moistened. 
And with fruit decked, 
Washed with liquid streams 
And like God's 
Paradise.""^ 

In many places, like the breaking forth of central 
fires, there spurts out the primitive joy of battle ; 
the poet hears the rush of javelins, sees the waiting 
ravens hover over the field, the gray wolf lurk at the 
dusky edges of the wood, '' the dark chooser of the 
slain," or he exults in : 

" The birds tearing 
Amid the slaughter of the swords," f 

The destruction of Pharaoh's host is chanted with 
a terrible and triumphant power. The cry of the 
perishing is in the waves, the waters full of weapons. 
The flood '^ rises as a cloud" against the Egyptians. 
The blue air is tainted with corruption; corpses roll 
in the foaming gulfs ; the Guardian of the flood 
strikes the unsheltering waves with his ancient fal- 
chion, and the band of the sinful sink, their souls fast 
encompassed. 

Bede tells us that many others beside Caedmon 
composed religious poems in English. These doubt- 
less, like the Miracle plays of later times, 

Other reli- ^j^ much to establish Christianity in 
gious poems. '^ 

the hearts of the people. Some of the 

* Thorpe's trans,, p. 19, \ lUd., p. 126. 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 37 

pieces of this character, probably composed during 
the great period of Northumbrian literature, or be- 
tween 670 and 800 or 825, are among the best pro- 
ductions of Anglo-Saxon verse. Some deal with 
miraculous legends of the saints, like the Andreas^ 
which tells of the trials and final triumph of St. 
Andrew in Mirraedonia, the Giithlac, and the Juliana. 
Some are metrical translations of the Psalms. 
Others, like the Judith, which contains a strong 
description of the killing of Holofernes, are directly 
based on the Bible. Even the Seafarer, which car- 
ries with it the very spell of the sea, its perils, and 
nameless fascination, till we hear the "wash of the 
waves," and feel our cheeks sting with the icy spray, 
is a religious allegory, and closes in a strain of 
devoutness and praise. 

We know almost nothing of the poet, or poets, 
who created this cycle of religious verse. Three 
poems, the Juliana, the Christ, and the 
Elene, or The Finding of the Cross, are 
certainly tlie work of a poet named Cynewulf (b. 
cir, 720-730?), as he has imbedded his name in the 
text arranged as an acrostic, and written in Runic 
letters. Of the man Cynewulf nothing remains; 
we have but his works and his name. He is gener- 
ally thought to have been a Northumbrian scop of 
the eighth century, and many poems, including 
the Andreas, the Judith, and the Seafarer, have 
been attributed to him, besides the three certainly 
his. 

His poem of Christ is in three parts, which treat 
respectively of the Nativity, the Ascension, and th^ 



38 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Day of Judgment. We are not disturbed here, as in 

Csedmon's Paraphrase^ by any harsh in- 

Cynewulfs trusion of the old heathenism ; the poet 
"Christ." . 11 r;n -, ^i 

seems wholly tilled with a new spirit 

of hope and blessedness and peace. Reading this 

after the somber and cheerless fatalism of the earlier 

poems, we seem to have passed from death into life, 

out of darkness into a marvelous light. The whole 

poem seems shining and radiant with brightness and 

joy, and with the assurance of a final triumph. The 

heavens are opened, and we hear the hymning of 

angels. The voice of God declares, in words that 

seem to scatter the ancient darkness of English 

heathenism : 

** Let there be light for ever and ever, 
A radiant joy for each of living men 
Who in their generations shall be born."* 

The light and happiness which seem in an indescrib- 
able way to flow out to us from the poem are broken 
only by the terrible vision of Judgment, when the 
guilty are shaken by the voice of doom. Then, with 
a rapturous description of the happiness of the 
blessed, the poem closes : 

** There is angels' song ; the bliss of the happy ; 

A gladsome host of men ; youth without age ; 

The glory of the heavenly chivalry ; health without pain 

For righteous workers ; and for souls sublime 

Rest without toil ; there is day without dark gloom, 

^xrt^x gloriously bright ; bliss without bale ; 

* Christ, Gollancz' translation. 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 30 

Friendship 'twixt friends forever without feud ; 
Peace without enmity for the blest in Heaven, 
In the communion of Saints." * 

The Eleney which some consider Cynewulf s great- 
est work, tells how Constantine, in peril from the 
Huns, sees the cross in a vision, and is told by an 
angel that he shall conquer by that token. He is 
victorious ; and after learning to what religion the 
sio^n belonofs he becomes a Christian. The rest of the 
poem deals with the journey of his mother^ Helena, in 
quest of the true cross, which is found buried on 
Mount Calvary with two others. A dead man is 
placed on each cross in turn. The touch of the 
third restores him to life, and the true cross is thus 
found. 

The prose of Aldhelm and of Bede marks the 
beginning of a new literary era. The English 
poetry of Csedmon, the scop, is a natural 
outgrowth of a literary form native to ligh prose, 
the English ; the Latin prose of Bede, 
the monk-scholar, reminds us of the rise of men 
of a new type in England, representatives of a 
class destined to guide for centuries the intellectual 
development of Europe. 

Baeda or Bede was born near Wearmouth in 673. 
Early left an orphan, he entered the neighboring 
monastery which Biscop had recently founded, and 
there lived out his useful, tranquil life, finding his 
pleasure in learning, or teaching, or writing. With 
the keen love of knowledge, the patient industry, the 

* Christ, GoUanez' translation, 1. 1648, etc. 



40 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

broadly receptive mind of a great scholar, he gath* 
ered to himself and summed up much that was best 
in the various streams of culture that met in the 
England of that day. Besides the teachings of 
Biscop and the use of his store of manuscripts, he 
absorbed the learning of Ireland, of Canterbury, of 
Gaul, and of Rome. Besides Greek and Latin, he 
knew something of Hebrew, and the treatise De 
Natura Rerum^ long used as a text-book in the mediae- 
val schools, shows him to have mastered the entire 
range of the science of that day. His commentaries 
on the Bible furnished the material for later work ; 
his Lives of the Saints associate him with the begin- 
ning of biographical literature in Europe, his great 
work on the Ecclesiastical History of the English 
People^ still the chief authority for the period of 
which it treats, '^ has gained for him the title of the 
" Father of English History." These, and many 
other works on almost every subject known to the 
learning of that day, are in Latin ; but his last labor, 
the closing words of which he dictated to his scribes 
almost with his dying breath, was an English trans- 
lation of the Gospel of St. John. 

Besides writing forty-five books, Bede found time 
to be a great teacher. Six hundred pupils were 
gathered about him in his school at Jarrow, and we 
trace his influence in the foundation of the great 
school at York. 

The figure of our first great scholar rises before 

* The Eoclesidstical History begins with Caesar's invasion of 
Britain and comes down to '^'31, or to four years before the 
death of Bede, 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 41 

US high above the level of the men about him, full of 
devotion, gentleness, and simplicity. In him, as in 
Cynewulf, the stern submission to an unknown weird 
is lost in the joyous acceptance of a larger hope. 
Well might he repeat in his last illness that sentence 
of St. Ambrose: " I have not lived so as to be ashamed 
to live among you ; nor am I afraid to die, because we 
have a good God." The meaning and influence of 
such a life grows clearer, as we read in the unaffected 
words of one of his disciples the story of the master's 
death. With failing breath he had toiled through 
the day, dictating his translation of St. John's Gospel, 
and as the day closed, his work was done. At twi- 
light, amid his weeping scholars, his face turned 
toward the oratory where he was wont to pray, with 
" great tranquillity " his soul went out from among 
them.* 

The conditions which had lifted Northumbria into 
intellectual leadership, and which had made Bede the 
teacher of the Western world, were ^j^e coming 
roughly broken. From the time of of the Danes. 
Bede's death, the once powerful kingdom of North- 
umbria was shaken by treason and anarchy, a prey to 
lawlessness, plague, and famine. Toward the close 
of the century (cir, 789) northern England is in the 
clutches of a new peril. Danish marauders swarm 
southward from their northern fiords, and the newly 
gained civilization of England is menaced by a fresh 
inrush of heathenism. The rich and defenseless 

* See Green's History of the English People^ vol. 1. p. 67. 
The story is originally told by Cuthbert in his letter to Cuth- 
wine. 



42 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

religious houses were shining marks for plunder. Of 
the monasteries at Jarrow and Holy Isle only the 
shattered walls were left. Early in the century fol- 
lowing the Danes closed in on England with a yet 
fiercer persistence. Northumbrian learning was 
blotted out ; the Abbey of Whitby was demolishedo 
Another band sacked Croyland, Peterborough, 
Huntingdon, and Ely. At last heathenism was con- 
fronted and beaten back by the steadfast heroism of 
Alfred (Battle of Edington, 878). 

Under the treaty of Wedmore which followed 
(879), the south was secured to the English only by 
yielding the north to the invaders, and Northumbria 
lay prostrate under the heel of the barbarian. 

Learning, thus stifled in the north, ''ose in the 

south into a new prominence under the unwearying 

and comprehensive eners^y of Alfred. 
Revival of ^^^, .i i • , i 

learning ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ king came to the throne he 

under , saw the great seats of learning de- 

stroyed, scholarship nearly extinct, and 
the whole people sinking back into ignorance. Not 
many north of the Humber, and hardly a man south 
of it, could understand the Latin service book, or 
translate a Latin letter. Alfred threw himself into 
the task of educational reform. He gathered learned 
men about him from many parts of Britain and from 
countries over sea : Asser the Welshman, Grimbald,* 
from the country of the Franks. He rebuilt monas- 
teries ; he founded a school at his court for the young 
nobles. He labored for the better training of the 

* Grimbald, or Grimbold, is supposed to have com^ from the 
Flemish monastery of St. Omer. 



LITERATUBE BEFORE CHAUCER 43 

priesthood, on whom the intellectual as well as spirit- 
ual life of the country mainly rested. But his hopes 
for education, with a breadth of popular sympathy 
wonderful in those rude times, reach far beyond the 
limits of the clerical class. It is his wish that all the 
children of freemen of sufBcient means, shall at least 
learn to read and write English. The motive back 
of his own writings is his desire to raise the general 
standard of education. He laments that as Latin is 
almost the sole language of scholarship, learning is 
locked up from the English reader. With a beauti- 
ful humility he becomes himself a pupil that he may 
be the teacher of his people as he is their ruler and 
defender. To meet the general need, he makes free 
renderings from the Latin, amplifying, explaining, 
and adapting them to the popular mind. In this 
way he prepared the Consolation of Philosophy^ by 
Boethius, a heathen philosopher of the fifth and 
sixth centuries, a book full of lofty reflections, and 
much read durins: the Middle As^es. He also trans- 
lated the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory the Great, 
a book designed to show what the ideal priest should 
be, and sent a copy to the bishop of every diocese. 
General history was furnished by his rendering of 
a popular work by Orosius, a Spanish monk, and the 
past of England by a translation of the EcclesiastU 
col History of Bede. It was in Alfred's reign, and 
probably under his direct influence and 
supervision, that thQ Aimals ov Chroni- /•^«^^^^*'"' 
cfe, brief historical records which monks 
had noted down in certain monasteries from a very 
early period, were given a fuller and less f ragmen- 



44 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATtJKE 

taiy form. This Chronicle remains a wonderful 
monument to early English patriotism. Professor 
Earle thinks that the English began this practice of 
jotting down important contemporary events at least 
as early as the seventh century. However this may 
be, V7e have in the Chronicle a history, a consid- 
erable portion of Avhich is contemporaneous, which 
stretches from the invasion of Caesar in 55 b. c. to 
the death of Stephen, a. d. 1154. "From Alfred's 
time the narrative continues sometimes full, some- 
times meager, sometimes a dry record of names and 
dates, sometimes rising to the highest flight of the 
prose picture or the heroic lay, but in one shape or 
other never failing us, till the pen dropped from the 
hand of the monk of Peterborough, who recorded 
the coming of Henry of Anjou." * At times, as though 
the Chronicler had grown restive under the restraints 
of the less impassioned medium, tlie prose gives way 
to verse. The chant of battle rises in the song on 
the victory at Brunanhurh^ or, as in tlie poem on tlie 
death of King Edgar, we find the song of mourning. 
However direct a share Alfred may have taken in 
the editing of the Chronicle, its improvement is 
Growth of naturally related to that elevation of 
English English prose into a literary importance 

prose. which is one of the glories of his reign. 

To Alfred the necessity for his work as a translator 
was doubtless a matter for regret ; to him it meant 
the decline of Latin learning ; to us it means also 
the beginning of EngUsh prose. As the history of 
English poetry reaches back to that great era when 
* ^. A. i<\ep-niAn TUncydo'pmdia Britannica, title '* England/' 



LTTERATtJUE BEFOBE CHAtJCER 45 

Northumbrian scholarship was paramount in the 
west, the rise of English prose dates from the court 
of Alfred at Winchester. 

The century and a half which lies between the 
death of Alfred and the Norman Conquest (901-1066) 
produced little of sufficient value from _ Alfred 
a purely literary aspect to detain the to the Norman 
general reader. Yet certain features of Conquest, 
the period must be fixed in the mind if we would 
not lose our hold on the continuity of England's 
mental growth. Although the country ceded to the 
Danes by the Peace of Wedmore (879) was gradually 
won back under Alfred's successors, Edward the 
Elder (901-925) and Athelstane (925-940), Wessex 
and the south retained that literary and political 
supremacy which Alfred had begun. After the 
ravages and final settlement of the Danes, the bril- 
liant literary activity of the north seems to have 
been extinguished, and for more than three centuries 
after the death of Alcuin (804) the pathetic silence 
that settles down on North umbria remains almost 
unbroken. In the south alone, where the effects of 
Alfred's practical enthusiasm still lingered, we find 
the traditions of culture and the signs of some 
literary activity. This southern learning and litera- 
ture was chiefly associated with great religious 
foundations and with the history of the Church. 
The men who rise into literary prominence are 
chiefly ecclesiastical dignitaries : Dunstan (924-988), 
Abbot of Glastonbury, and afterward Archbishop 
of Canterbury ; ^thelwold (908 (?)-984), Bishop of 
Winchester ; ^Ifric (fl. 1006), Abbot of Eynsham. 



46 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATURE 

or Ensham, near Oxford. The energies of these men, 
and especially of the two last mentioned, were largely 
occupied in introducing into the English monasteries, 
that had become worldly and corrupt, the stricter 
rule of life Avhich had already begun to prevail in 
Gaul and Flanders. They were educational and 
monastic reformers, and the tone of their work is 
consequently scholarly or theological. ^Ifric "is 
the voice of that great Church reform which is the 
most signal fact in the history of the latter half of 
the tenth century." His Homilies^ or sermons (990- 
994), are famous in the history of early English 
prose. 

On the whole we observe that while poetry had held 
a large place in Northumbria during the era of her 
literary leadership, the energies of Wessex during 
this later period find their main outlet in prose. The 
historic prose of the Clironide^ broken occasionally 
by the chant of the war-song, text-books, sermons, or 
the lives of saints, such is the shape taken by the 
literary production of this time, until we read signs 
of an altered mood in the period which directly pre- 
cedes that mighty change in the history of England, 
the Norman Conquest. 



STUDY LIST 

LITEBATURE FROM EARLIEST TIMES TO NORMAN 
CONQUEST 

1. Celtic Literature. Henry Morley gives specimens 
of Celtic poetry in his English Writers, vol. 1. chap. iii. 
Among these Llywa/rch's Lament for his son Gwenn (p. 217), 



LITEKATUEE BEFORE CHAUCER 4T 

Lament for Cyndyllan (p. 218), and TTie Gododin of Aneurin 
(p. 223), may be particularly noted. The poem last named 
is also, with others, in Shorter English Poems, edited by H. 
Morley in Cassell's Library of English Literature. F. also 
Gaelic Poems, edited with translation in the same volume, 
and for Irish Celts, cf. Old Celtic Romances, by P. AY. Joyce. 
Tennyson's Voyage of Maeldune, is founded on one of the 
i'tories in this collection. 

Lady Charlotte Guest's edition of The MaUnogion is the 
most complete ; The Boys' Mabinogion, by Sidney Lanier, will 
be found convenient with class. 

W. F. Skene's The Four Ancient Books of Wales, two 
volumes, contains Cymric poems attributed to the bards of the 
sixth century. 

2. Early English. Good examples of early English poetry 
will be found in Longfellow's Poets and Poetry of Europe, 
Note particularly The Exile's Complaint, The GraDe^ The 
Soul's Complaint against the Body, and The Ruined Wall- 
Stone. There are also extracts from the longer poems. (This 
is a good collection for class of younger students.) The 
Seafarer, The Fortunes of Man, opening of Csedmon's Crea^ 
tion, etc., will be found in Morley's English Writers, vol. ii. 
The Seafarer is also in Illustrations of English Religion, edited 
by Morley, in Cassell's Library of English Literature, and 
in the appendix to Early English Literature of Stopford 
A. Brooke. See also Conybeare's Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon 
Literature. For Beowulf, The Deeds of Beoiculf, John Earle, 
Clarendon Press (prose translation), and Beowulf, metrical 
line for line translation, by J. M. Garnett (Ginn & Co.). 
Prof essor John Lesslie Hall's translation (D. C. Heath & Co.), 
is both rhythmical and alliterative. For Caedmon, Thorpe's 
Metrical Paraphrase gives translation with text. William 
of Malmesbury's account of Aldhehn, and Cuthbert's Let- 
ter on the Death of Bede, are given in Morley's Library 
of English Literature, and interesting extracts from the 
prefaces of King Alfred will be found in Earle's Anglo-Saocon 
Literature, 



48 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

3. Criticism and Hsstory of Literature. Azarias' De^ 
velopment of English Literature— Old English Period, Ten 
Brink's Early English Literature. The Englishman and the 
Scandinavian, by Frederick Metcalfe, compares the Early 
English and Norse literatures. The History of Early English 
Literature, by Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. Translations of 
early poems in this book are especially concise and spirited. 

4. History. Green's 3f aid ?ig of England, Green's Conques: 
of England. On extent of admixture of English and Celt, a 
question much discussed, consult Matthew Arnold's Celtic 
Literature; Huxley's article on Some Fixed Points in British 
Ethnology, in Critiques and Addresses, p. 177 ; Isaac Taylor's 
Words and Places; Henry Morley's article on The Celtic 
Element in English Literature, in Clement Marot and Other 
Essays, 

III. THE NORMAN CONQUEST 

The conquest of England by the Normans in 1066 
brought a new and powerful in-fluence into English 
life and literature. The Normans, or Northmen, 
were originally a mixed horde of piratical adventur- 
ers from Scandinavia and Denmark, who had won a 
country for themselves in the north of France.* En- 
terprising, quick-witted, open to new ideas, this race 
of born rulers did more than seize upon some of the 
fairest lands of southern Europe ; wherever it went 
it appropriated much that was best in the civilization 
of those it subdued. The fur-clad and half-savage 
Northmen, whose black, square-sailed ships crowded 
up the Seine after Rollo, were heathen freebooters. 
The Normans who conquered England a century and 
a half later were the most courtly, cultured, art- 
loving, and capable race in Europe. In origin they 

* V. Table of Races, i»ote p. 12, supra. 



LltEHATtJiRE BEFORE CHAUCEft 49 

were Teutonic, like the English ; yet so completely 
had they adopted and, in some respects, improved 
the civilization of the Gaul and the Roman, that 
scarcely an outward trace of their origin remained. 
After establishing themselves in Normandy they had 
rapidly acquired the corrupt Latin of the region and 
transformed it into a literary language. " They 
found it a barbarous jargon, they fixed it in writing, 
and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, in 
romance."* They became Christians, and eagerly 
absorbed the learning which the Church had brought 
with it, encouraging such scholars as Lanfranc and 
Anselm to settle among them. They built splen- 
did castles and cathedrals ; they were foremost in 
instituting chivalry. Their poets, or trouvdres^ 
chanted long knightly songs of battle, love, and 
heroism — Chaiisoiis de Gestes,\ as they are called — 
that in style and spirit were not Scandinavian, but 
French and southern. Coming from the cruder 
heroism of the vanishing Teutonic age into this 
Norman world of the eleventh century, we feel that 
life has adorned itself with a new courtliness, gayety, 
and affluence. The northern hardness and repression 
have softened under the fructifying breath of a 

*F. Macaulay's History of England, vol. 1. pp. 21-22. 

f ''Chansons de Gestes, songs of families, as the term liter- 
ally means, are poems describing the history and achieve- 
ments of the great men of France in early times. Oeste has 
three senses — (1) The deeds {gesta) of a hero ; (2) the poem 
illustrating those deeds ; (3) the family of the hero, and the 
act of poems celebrating it." — Saintsbury's Primer of French 
Literature, p. 3. 



60 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

warmer air, heavy with romance and the odors of 
the pleasure-loving South » From the somber shad- 
ows of an antique world, with the Titanic shapes of 
its hero-sagas, we approach the sunshine and the 
shifting colors, the movement and the blazonry, of 
the Romantic Middle Age. The Normans had 
become leaders in this new world, largely through 
that extraordinary adaptability, that readiness to 
receive and utilize fresh impressions which was char- 
acteristic of their race ; but the followers of William 
the Conqueror were far from being pure Teutons, 
even in blood. In France the invading Northmen 
had intermarried with the native population, which 
was largely Celtic, and the two races mixed as the 
English and Celt did in parts of England.* " The 
indomitable vigor of the Scandinavian, joined to the 
buoyant vivacity of the Gaul, produced the ruling 
and conquering race of Europe." f With William, 
too, was a motley following of adventurers from 
many parts of France, so that through the Conquest 
the Celtic blood, this time mixed with that of other 
races, mingled a second time with that of the 
English. But more important than the strain of 
Celtic blood that flowed in Avith the Norman, is the 
nature of the civilization the Norman carried with 
him. However closely he may have been bound by 
descent to the Teutonic North, the tone of the 
Norman civilization was essentially French and 
Roman. From the time when Harold fell among the 
heap of English dead at Hastings to the time when 

* V. supra, p. 17. 

t Freeman's Norman Conquest^ vol. i. p. 170. 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 51 

the genius and the speech of English and Norraan 
were wedded in the poetry of Chaucer, our attention 
is centered upon the struggle for precedence in lan- 
guage and in literature between the Norman and the 
English, and upon the final but modified triumph of 
the native over the intruding foreign type. In the 
period immediately following the Norman Conquest 
the lines of distinction between conquerors and con- 
quered are sharply drawn. England is in the mailed 
hand of the king and his barons ; the king is the 
Duke of Normandy, the barons Norman barons. 
Separate at first, yet side by side, are two races — 
Norman and English : two languages — Norman 
and English. The great bulk of the upper or 
land-owning class was made up of Normans ; the 
Norman tower, massive, square, obdurate, rose 
throughout the land, and forced home on every 
Englishman the hated fact of a foreign rule. But a 
dominion of a less tangible but no less actual kind 
came with the Norman Conqueror ; the leadership in 
thought and scholarship and literature passed quietly 
under the control of the foreigner. In 
the earlier half of the eleventh century, ^^iters. 
while learning languished in England, it 
was making rapid advances in the schools of Nor- 
mandy and of France. The Conquest linked 
England to a nation which was then taking a 
leading part in the intellectual movement of the 
time ; it laid the bridge by which the culture of the 
Continent passed over. The monasteries continued 
to be the great springs of education and of literature, 
but by the Conquest the monasteries themselves had 



Si mTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

passed very largely into the hands of the foreigner, 
so that the intellectual life of the nation was thus 
influenced at its very source by an alien and higher 
culture. As the English earl was replaced by the 
Norman baron, so in mau}^ cases the great English 
dignitaries of the Church were superseded by 
Norman or foreign scholars. Thus Lanfranc was 
taken from the monastic school at Bee, then famous 
for the part it was taking in the intellectual revival 
in Normandy, and made Archbishop of Canterbury. 
From Bee, too, came Anselm, to be Lanfranc's suc- 
cessor in the archbishopric, a man of rare holiness, 
purity, and gentleness, as well as one of the deepest 
thinkers of his time. Thus, during the period suc- 
ceeding the Conquest, foreign scholarship did much 
to lift up the tone of education in England, which, 
especially during the early half of the eleventh cen- 
tury, had fallen very low. These foreign scholars 
were* writers as well as teachers, and we owe to them, 
directly or indirectly, a considerable mass of prose 
literature on theological, historical, and even scien- 
tific subjects. The absolute contrast which this 
work presents, in both form and object, to that of 
Alfred, some two centuries before, brings clearly 
before us the new condition of affairs. The aim of 
the great English king had been the spread of learn- 
ing among the English people, by giving them the 
best works he knew in the English speech. The 
men of the later revival wrote as scholars addressing 
scholars. They employed Latin, then the universal 
language of learning throughout Europe, while the 
iPeecb of Alfreci was fading out of literature, 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 53 

having enough to do to keep itself alive at all as the 
spoken language of a subject people. Among the 
most important works of this Latin prose are those 
which deal with English history. Anglo Norman or 
Latin Chronicles, so called to distinguish them from 
the English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicley which they 
gradually superseded, are kept at the different mon- 
asteries, or sometimes, later, composed by writers 
brought in living contact with public affairs by a 
residence at the court. Thus in the twelfth century 
we find such famous historians as William of Malmes- 
bury {cir. 1095-6-1142 ?), Ordericus Vitalis (1075-czV. 
1141-1142), and Henry of Huntingdon {cir, 1084- 
11 54), whose works continue to furnish materials to the 
English historians of the present day. These chron- 
iclers were not always foreigners, although they fol- 
lowed the foreign fashion of writing their histories 
in Latin ; their work ends with Matthew Paris, the 
last and greatest of the chroniclers at St. Albans, 
who died in 1259. 

The poetry as well as the scholarship of Normandy 
came into England in the train of the Conqueror, 
The Norman abbot ruled in the monas- 
tery, the Norman poet, or trouv^re^ wan- ^^^| poetir. 
dered from castle to castle, singing the 
chanson of Norman chivalry in the Norman -French 
of the conquering race. When we read how, at the 
battle of Hastings, the jongleur Taillefer chanted 
the song of Roland, the famous Paladin of Charle- 
magne, throwing up his sword and catching it again 
with all the dexterity of his craft, the scene sticks in 
Qur imagination as something dramatic and typical. 



54 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

At present we can only speak of this Norman- 
French poetry in the most general terms, as we are 
concerned only with its broad relations to the devel- 
opment of English literature. Some of these poems 
were long histories in verse, as the Estoire des Miglois, 
a chronicle of the early English kings, of Geoffrey 
Gaimar, a Norman troiivere. Others were romances 
on the Trojan War, on the adventures of Charle- 
magne and his Court, on Arthur and his Knights of 
the Round Table, or on Alexander the Great. Groups 
of poems, Cycles of Romance, as they are called, 
grew up around these favorite themes ; and some of 
these, current at first among the French-speaking 
classes, were translated into English during the latter 
part of the thirteenth century, or furnished the 
materials for English poems. In this way did the 
romantic sentiment, the splendor and bravery of the 
French chivalry, sink deep into the thought and 
imagiaation of the English, becoming truly a part of 
the nation's mental life. So that when Chaucer and 
Gower wrote, a centurj^ later, it had become part of 
the intellectual inheritance they received from their 
fathers, and found a beautiful and natural expres- 
sion in their works. Nor was the Norman the only 
foreign literature that came to enrich and quicken 
English poetry during the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries. Before the Norman Conquest, whatever 
intellectual impulse came to England from without 
had come through the Church ; now there arose 
throughout Europe a chorus of melody which was 
the prelude to the great modern literature, and in 
remote England, at least the echo of this melody was 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 55 

to be more and more clearly heard. The troubadour 
in the south of France sang his love-songs as 
the trouvhre of the north chanted his chansons of 
knightly deeds, and Ricljard I. (1189-1199) the 
lover of this southern, or Proven9al poetry, quick- 
ened by his patronage of it " the love of song in 
courtly Englishmen." * 

Celtic literature brought from its own store of 
legends the germ of the Arthurian romances, and we 
could have no better illustration of the appropriation 
of foreign elements which characterized this time 
than is presented by the evolution of this epic of 
Arthur. The Welsh chronicler, Geoffrey of Mon- 
mouth, relates the story among others in his fabu- 
lous History of British Kings (1147), it thence 
passes into French verse and is retold by the Norman 
trouvhrey Geoffrey Gaimar ; then Wace, another 
trouvere, translates it, making some additions (1155), 
and presents liis work to Queen Eleanor, the wife 
of Henry II. The subject grows in popularity; tra- 
ditions and personages at first entirely distinct are 
swept into the current that circles with ever increasing 
volume about the heroic figure of the half-mythical 
Celtic king — the white-bearded Merlin, the Breton 
story of Tristram and Isolde, Lancelot, who was to 
hold so large a place in the story in its later forms. 
Walter Map, a brilliant Welshman at the court of 
Henry II., is generally supposed to have been the 
first to combine the story, in a Latin history which 
has not been preserved, with the legend of the 
Holy Grail, or cup used at the Last Supper. After 
* Morley's English Writers, iii. 151. 



56 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

all these experiences, the story at last i^and its way 
into English, in the Brut, or Chronicle of Layamon, 
a poem of which we shall speak presently. Thus the 
work of chronicler, trouvere^ and court poet, freighted 
with rich spoils from other literatures, becomes at 
last an English possession, a great treasure-house to 
English poets down to our own time, w^hen Matthew 
Arnold has retold us the story of Tristram and 
Iseiilt and Tennyson given us his Idylls of the King, 
Underneath all the weight of this foreign society 
that encrusted the surface of life, that glittered in 
conspicuous places, apparently dominant 
in the Church and in the state, lay the 
great bulk of the population, still obstinatelj^ English. 
Underneath the upper stratum of society, with its 
foreign speech and its foreign literature, the Eng- 
lish people still clung tenaciously to their mother- 
tongue ; still preserved, if in a feeble and somewhat 
intermittent way, their own native literature. Polit- 
ically the Norman conquered England ; but in fact, 
during the two centuries that followed Hastings, 
England conquered the Norman, taking to her use 
such materials from his language and literature as 
pleased her, yet keeping the essence of her language 
and national genius substantially unchanged. It was 
the singular fate of the Norman to adopt for a second 
time the language of a nation he had subdued. He 
conquered in France and exchanged a Teutonic for a 
Romance speech ; he conquered in England only to 
unlearn his Romance speech for our Teutonic English. 
The Norman genius was pliable and imitative ; the 
English genius bad that same inflexible persist- 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 57 

ence which in modern times has enabled the English* 
man to force his language and civilization on nations 
at tlie very ends of the earth. How, then, did the 
English literature survive during the long years when 
the Norman was first in the land; how did it reassert 
at last its lost supremacy ? 

From the Norman Conquest to the reign of John 
(1199-1216) English maintained itself with diffi- 
culty as a written language. Yet -^^^^^y^ y^. 
enouo^h written Eng^lish of this period erature after 

I, ^ -^^ ^ ^ : / I. ^1. ^ the Conquest, 

has driited down to us to show that 

even as a written language it was not wholly crowded 
out by its more fashionable rivals, but was rather 
holding its own until better times. The English 
Chronicle^ written in a language which bears hardly 
a trace of foreign influence, extends to 1154, with 
but a short break during the turbulent reign of 
Stephen. Besides this we have various indications 
of an undercurrent of Eiiglish literature, such as 
versions of the Psalter, tlie quaint proverbial poem 
The Sayings of Alfred in the reign of Henry II. 
(1154-1189), and scraps and snatches of English pop- 
ular song embedded in the Latin histories of the 
time. Yet when we have pieced together such relics 
of an English literature as diligent search can dis- 
cover, tlie result is meager enough alongside of the 
great volume of French and Latin which represents 
the chief literary activity of the time. 

When we reach the reign of John we note the 
signs of change. The year 1204 saw, through the 
loss of Normandy, the severing of tliose ties whicl) 
upited England to a Continental power ; in the yeai 



58 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1205 English poetry arose, as from the depths of a 
remote past, in the Brut of Layamon. Thus, 
strangely enough, the end of a foreign rule in Eng- 
land, and the rebirth of a true English poetry are 
almost exactly contemporaneous. We know nothing 
of Layamon but what he tells us in the opening lines 
of his poem. He was a parish priest in North 
Worcestershire, and dwelt at Earnley (now Areley 
Regis) on the banks of the Severn. There it came to 
him in mind and in his chief thought that he would 
tell the noble deeds of the English ; so he got books, 
among others the Romans de Brut of Wace, on which 
his own Brut is largely based. How near we get to 
the life of this simple-minded scholar, how truly human 
and real he seems to us, when we read : '' Layamon 
laid before him three books, and turned over the 
leaves ; lovingly he beheld them, may the Lord be 
merciful to him." * Layamon's Brut is a profuse 
history of Britain during those good days before the 
coming of the English, which Celtic patriotism had 
overlaid with mythical incidents, finding in them a 
very pleasure ground of the imagination. It begins 
with ^neas, telling how his descendant Brutus came 
to occupy the "winsome land of Britain," and comes 
down to Cadwallon, who was called the last of the 
British kings. In the unwieldy narrative are the 
stories of Locrine, King Lear, r.nd King Arthur, 
destined to be made famous by the genius of later 
times. Let us look for a moment at the significance 
of this extraordinary poem. From one aspect it is 
almost like a voice from the England of Caedmon 
* Layamon's ^rz^^ ; with literal traaslation by Sir F. Maddeo 



UTERATUBE BEFORE CHAUCER 59 

Cr of Cynewulf. Its language is well-nigh wholly- 
English, hardly one hundred words of Norman-French 
origin being found in its thirty-two thousand lines. 
Its spirit, too, is often Englisl), as where the verse warms 
with the old fighting rage of the true English battle 
song. Yet from another aspect the poem shows no 
less clearly the tinge of those foreign elements which 
liad come to color life and literature. The subject, 
drawn from Norman and Celtic sources, is the glory 
not of English but of British heroes. Tlie work, as a 
whole, suggests to us that the union of those elements 
which are to make the England of the future, has 
already begun. " Layamon stands upon the dividing 
line between two great periods, which he unites in a 
singular manner. He once more reproduces for us 
an age that is forever past ; at the same time he is 
the first English poet to draw from French sources, 
the first to sing of King Arthur in Englisli verse." * 

From the time of Layamon the English language 
struggles forward to a greater place in literature. 
By this time the old rivalry between 
English and Norman had passed away, ^^^^J^ ^' 
the superiority of the English in mere 
numbers, together with the loss of Normandy, 
which confined the interests of both races within 
the limits of the island, told more and more in 
favor of a national unity. So, although in Henry 
in.'s reign, one influential Norman tries hard to 
make French the exclusive language of literature, 
numbers and persistence pushed English literature 
more and more to the front. 

* Ten Brink, Early English Literature, p. 193. 



60 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

We may not pause to speak of the works that 
mark this advance, the religious books, such as the 
Ormidum {cir, 1215), a versification of the daily 
service, followed by a brief sermon, the Aiicren 
liiwle, or Rule of Anchoresses {cii\ 1225) ; but we 
must remember that it is toward the latter part of 
this thirteenth century that the French romances 
appear in an English dress,* a fact significant of the 
increasing importance of the English speech. Yet it 
was not a pure but a composite language that was to 
be the standard English of the future, and these 
romances show an increasingly large proportion of 
French words. So on every side we see that this 
period of preparation, which is to lead to our language 
and our literature, is drawing to an end. 

So far we have spoken only of the loritttn litera- 
ture of the English language during this Anglo- 
Xorman time, but we must remember 

Boetrv^ that in these early d^ys when printing 

was undreamed of, manuscripts costly, 
and reading and writing unusual accomplishments, 
a great part of a nation's literature, and of its best 
mental life, lay outside the comparatively narrow 
circle of books. TThen we get fairly out of doors, 
leaving the troiivere or jongleur in the baron's hall, 
leaving the monk scribe in his monastery, bend- 
ing over his rolls of parcliment, we come at last 
face to face with the people. The world of books 
does not yet exist for them, yet they, too, have a 
literature : for history — tradition and legend ; for 
poetry — the lilt of ballad and song. There the 

* See p. 54, supra. 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 61 

childlike wonder or terror of their superstitious 
fancies, their strong primitive emotions, find their 
direct and natural, if somewhat crude and primi- 
tive, expression. The whole soul of the nation goes 
out into them. In our day the thousands go to 
tlie newspaper or the novel for their sensations. 
Then the people were glad to crowd about some 
wandering gleeman by the waj^side, or in the village 
alehouse. Then, huddled at dusk about the win- 
ter's fire, tlie country folk whispered the old wives' 
talk of elf and ghost and goblin; then, from 

•• The spinsters and the knitters in the sun/* 

from the plowman in his furrow, or the milkmaid 
bringing home her pail, arose the music of the popu- 
lar song. It seems probable that the Norman Con- 
quest made no break in this English popular litera- 
ture. We know that a little scrap of song ascribed 
to Canute was kept alive by oral tradition from his 
time to the days of Henry II.,* when a chronicler 
chanced to preserve it in his history. Doubtless there 
were thousands of popular songs which never found 
their way into the written literature, and gradually 
perished on the people's lips. In prose a defiant 
patriotism delights in stories of Hereward, the Eng- 
lish outlaw, and of how he held out in the Fens 
against the Conqueror, or, later, legend and ballad 
cluster about the outlawed Robin Hood. These rude 

* ** Merie sungen the munaches binnan Ely," etc. (Pleasantly 
sang the monks in Ely). Morley's English Writers, iii. p. 240. 
The story is told by Thomas of Ely, who wrote a history of 
his monastery to 1107. 



62 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

rhymes, probably dating back as far as the thirteentli 
century, are the very breath of the popular spirit. 
Robin Hood is their hero; he embodies the English 
hatred of the Norman rule, their love of a free and 
manly life in the merry greenwood, their delight in 
archery, in ale, in singlestick, and shrewd strokes. 
This popular hero hoodwinks sheriffs and defies the 
law, yet he has the courtesy, fairness, and gentleness 
that appeal to the English heart. He suffers no 
woman to be molested; " poor men's goods he spared, 
abundantly relieving them with that which by theft 
he got from abbeys and the houses of the rich earls." 
And in these ballads we get out into the sunshine 
and free air, by little artless touches that tell us of 
lives at home under the open sky. 

** When shaws * been sheene, and shradds f full f ayre. 
And leaves both large and longe, 
Itt is merrye walking in the fayre f orrest 
To* heare the small birdes songe." :|: 

The famous Cuckoo Song, composed before 1240, 
has a yet fresher breath of nature; the lines have 
caught the rhythm of that buoyant pleasure that sets 
the blood dancing in the spring: 

** Summer is a-coming in. 
Loud sing cuckoo : 
Groweth seed and bloweth mead 
And springeth the wood now. 
Sing cuckoo, cuckoo. 

* Shaws, etc., "Woods are shining." 
f/SAra^^c^, perhaps** swards." 
t Bohin Hood and Guy of Gftsborne, 



LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 63 

Ewe bleateth after lamb, 
Cow after calf calls, 
Bullock sterteth, buck verteth 

Merry sing cuckoo. 
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well sings the cuckoo. 
So sweet you never knew. 
Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo.* 

So under the crust of the Norman chanson or 
romance, or under the Latin of the scholastics, we find 
the true English literature, flowing like a fresh and 
living stream under the ice which will melt at last 
into its moving waters. 

lY.— THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 

After the Conquest French was the language of 
the court and ruling classes in England, and, with a 
few exceptions, it became that of literature. English 
was despised bj^ the polished Norman as the barbarous 
tongue of a conquered people. The mass of English 
still used it, but as it almost ceased to be a written 
or literary language, many words not used in ordinary 
speech were lost from its vocabulary. For a time 
Norman-French and English in its various dialects 
continued in use, side by side, as distinct languages, 
but it cannot have been very long before the Nor- 
mans who had permanently settled in England began 
to learn the native speech. The two races grew 
closer together, and, by the loss of Normandy in 
1204, the connection with a foreign and French-speak^ 
ing power was broken. Parisian French had indeed 
come with the Plantagenet kings; during the reigns of 
John (1199-1216) and Henry IIL (1216-1272) it was 
* The song as here given is in modernized English. 



64 IXTHODUCTION TO E^'GLISH LITERATURE 

the fashion at court, and for some time later it con* 
nnued to be the language of state documents, of 
society, education, and the courts of law. Yet, in 
spite of this, Englisli began to be more generally 
employed by the French-speaking people outside of 
court circles. A writer of the latter part of the 
thirteenth century declares : '' For unless a man 
knows French people regard him little ; but the low 
men hold to Englisk and to their own speech stilh'* * 

By the fourteenth century this stubborn *' holding 
to English " had made the triumpli of that language 
certain. The Hundred Tears' War against France, 
begun in Edward III.'s reign (132 7-13 77), may have 
helped to bring French into disfavor, and hastened, 
but not caused, the more general use of English. 
By 1339 English instead of French was employed 
in nearly all the schools as the medium of instruction. 

In 1362 Parliament passed an act providing that 
the pleadings in the law courts should henceforth 
be in English, ^^ because the laws, customs, and 
statutes of this realm, be not commonly known in the 
same realm, for that they be pleaded, showed, and 
judged in the French tongue.*' f 

But while French was being thus given up, there 
was as yet no one national English established and 
understood throughout the whole of England. One 
kind of English was spoken in the north, another in 
the middle districts, and a third in the south, and 
even these three forms were split up into further 
dialects. These three dialects are commonly known 

* Robert of Gloucester's Bhyming Chronicle, Cii\ 1298. 
\ LouDsbury's English Language, p, 54. 



LITEKATURE BEFORE CHAUCER 65 

as the Northern, Midland, and Southern English. 
During the latter part of the fourteenth century the 
East Midland English, or that spoken in and about 
London, which was in the eastern part of the Mid- 
land district, asserted itself above the confusion and 
gradually became accepted as the national speech. 
Midland English had an importance as the language 
of Oxford and Cambridge, as well a^ that of the 
capital and the court, and its supremacy was further 
due to its being made the language of literature. The 
language of Wyclif's translation of the Bible (1380), 
a variety of this Midland form, is plainly the parent 
of the noble Bible English of our later versions. 
The poet John Gower (1325 ?-1408) gave up the use 
of French and Latin to write in the King^s or Court 
English, and, more than all, it was in this same East 
Midland English of the Court that Geoffrey Chaucer 
wrote the poems which became so widely read. 
These works gave to East Midland English a 
supremacy which it never lost. 

Now this East Midland dialect was not a pure 
English ; for there, as elsewhere, the local vari- 
ety of the native speech had been modified by 
a large infusion of French. When, by the middle 
of the fourteenth century, the tendency toward 
a general adoption of English grew too strong 
to be resisted, that English was neither the Anglo- 
Saxon of an earlier time, nor a mere outgrowth 
of it, but a Frenchified tongue. The language of 
Chaucer was thus a mixed language, in its founda- 
tions of grammar and construction still substantially 
English, in its vocabulary showing a considerable 



66 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITER ATUEE 

infusion of French. By the establishment of this com^ 
posite speech the influence of the Norman Conquest 
on the language was made lasting, so that the effect of 
the French rule in England remains deeply stamped 
on the English we speak and write to-day. Castle, 
chivalry, royal, rohe, coronation, debonair, courtesy^ 
such stately words our homelier English owes to the 
French and Latin. Just as the English race was 
improved during the preparatory period by its mix- 
ture first with the Celt, and then with the partially 
Celtic followers of the Conqueror, so by its mixture 
with French the English language was made more 
rich and flexible. 

Many elements had thus combined in this com- 
posite England, and the way was made clear for a 
great poet who could lay the foundations of a truly 
national literature and language. That poet was 
Geoffrey Chaucer. 

STUDY LIST 
FROM NOBMAN CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 

This period contains little literature suited for the study of 
any but advanced classes. A few references, however, are 
given for those who wish to gain something more than a 
second-hand knowledge of the time. 

1. Old Feexcs Liteeature. Specimens of Old French 
(IX.-Xy. Centuries) with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by 
Paget Toynbee, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1892, is a useful 
handbook and contains full bibliographical references, valu- 
able literary information, etc. Aubertin, Histoire de la 
Langue et de la Litterature Frangaise au Mot/en Age ; Van 
Laun's French Literature, Saintsbury's Primer of FrencTi 
Literature^ Fortier's Histoire de la Litterature Frangaise 



LITEKATURE BEFORE CHAUCER ^/ 

2. ANGLO-L.-i.Tm Poems, etc. Apocalypse of GoUas is given 
in translation in Cassell's Library of English Literature, 
Shorter English Poems, edited by H. Morley. The Latin 
Poems Commonly Attributed to Walter Mapes, collected and 
edited by Thomas Wright. M. A., Camden Society, 1841, 
gives Latin text and translation with introduction. Anglo* 
Latin Satirical Poetry of the Ticelfth Century, edited by 
Thomas Wright ; H. Morley's Early English Prose Romances, 
Carisbrooke Library (contains seven specimens); Ellis' Specie 
men s of Early English Me trica I Roman ces . Old En glish Ba lla ds, 
edited by F. B. Gummere (1894), in Atheneum Press Series. 

3. Layamon. Layamon's Brut, or Chronicle of Britain; a 
poetical semi-Saxon paraphrase of the Brut of Wace, edited by 
Sir Frederic Madden, 3 vols., published by Society of Anti- 
quarians, London, 1847. Text with translation, notes, and 
grammatical glossary. Morley's English Writers, iii. 203 
et seq., includes extract from the Brut, 

4. Gesta RoArAXOiiUM. This has been edited by Thomas 
Wright ; it has also appeared in Knickerboclvcr Xugget Series, 
translated by C. Swan, and in several other x>opular editions. 

5. Lawrence Mixot. War poems are given in Cassell's 
Library of English Literature, Shorter English Poems, edited 
by Morley. 

6. Celtic. ^iQ^lien's Literature of the Kymrie {i^nih and 
Iw^elfth century). See also study list, pp. 46, 47, supra. Studies 
in the Arthurian Legend^ by John Rhys, M. A., Clarendon 
Press. 

7. History axd Literature. Norman Britain, in Early 
Britain Series ; The Story of the Normans, by S. O. Jewett 
(Story of the Nations Series); Green's History of the English 
People, vol. i.; Morley's English Writers, vol. iii., covers 
period from Conquest to Chaucer. Freeman's Norman Con- 
quest, vol. V. ch. XXV. (" Effects of Norman Conquest on Lan- 
guage and Literature,"), H. Hall's Court Life binder the Plan- 
tagenets, Church's Life of St. Anselm, H. W. Preston's 
Troiibadour and Trouvhe, J O.HalliwellPhillipps' The Thom^ 
ton Romances 



CHAPTER II 

GEOPTEEY CHAUCER a340(7)-140(D 
Chaucer's century 

To enter into the poetry of Chaucer, and to under 
stand how vast an influence it had on the develop- 
ment of our lanoruao^e and literature, we 
Cliaucer's . . , , , . 

England. niust try to imagine ourselves back m 

the England of his time. Instead of the 
rich and well-ordered beauty which in modern Eng- 
land bears witness to centuries of patient cultivation, 
we are in a land but partly reclaimed from its 
original wildness. Dense growths of woodland, 
the haunt of the deer, the gray wolf, the boar, and 
the wild bull, stretch uninterruptedly for miles and 
miles. There are some seventy of these great 
forests in Chaucer's England, survivals of the 
primeval growth which had once almost covered the 
island. In other places, as in the low-lying fenland 
in the shires of Lincoln, Cambridge, or Somerset, are 
sodden regions of marsh, darkened at certain seasons 
by huge flights of heron, " trailing it, with legs and 
wings." All through the land rises the solid 
masonry of the Norman castle, the noble beauty of 
cathedral or abbey ; for the world is still feudal and 
monastic. In the open and fertile places stand the 
nii^Jor-houses of the great proprietors, in the midst 




GEOFFREY CHAUCER 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 69 

of acres of plowland and pasture ; and huddled 
together a little apart are the squalid hovels of the 
laborers. Here life moves within a fixed and con- 
tracted orbit, shut up in seclusion or held to a dreary- 
monotony of toil. Into such a life the traveling 
"minstrel," with his old-time romance of Arthur, 
Sir Isembras, or the Tale of Troy, or the joiigleuvy 
with his sleight-of-hand tricks and posture-making, 
brought a welcome breath of the great world without. 
The people themselves find relief in a childlike 
abandonment to outbursts of boisterous merry-mak- 
ings Hunger, oppression, and the cruel indifference 
of the great are heavy on the poor ; yet at times, as 
when in the springtime pent-up youth breaks out 
of the stifling air of smoky cities to do observance 
to May, wath hawthorn boughs and dance and song, 
w^e feel ovv pulses quicken with the light-hearted 
mirth of that merry England which lives in the 
buoyancy of Chaucer's verse. Again, as we pass in 
imagination through Chaucer's England, we find a 
hint of the insecurity of this mediaeval world in the 
walls that shut in the dwellers in the towns from out- 
side danger. At Newcastle-on-Tyne, near the Scotch 
border, where marauding bands swoop down as the 
Douglas did against the Percys, a hundred armed 
citizens keep nightly watch on the walls. London 
itself, except on the side toward the river, is still a 
walled town. Within, between rows of low wood- 
and-plaster houses, jostles and traffics that gayly 
colored world that lights up Chaucer's canvas. The 
streets are narrow and unpaved, and foul with heaps 
of refuse, but beyond the city gates are lanes leading 



70 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

out through fair meadow lands, where the tender 
green of the spring grass is starred b}^ the daisies that 
Master Chaucer loves to greet and honor. A stone 
bridge, with houses built on either side of its narrow 
roadway, connects Chaucer's London with South- 
wark, on the opposite side of the Thames. Here are 
fields and gardens and the round wooden buildings 
for bearbaiting or cockfightiug ; here, near the end 
of the bridge, is the old Tabard Inn, in whose square 
courtyard motley companies of pilgrims are wont to 
gather on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas a 
Becket, at Canterbury. 

But under this quiet mediaeval garb, we note on 
every hand the signs of coming change. England, 
Chaucer's ^^^^ ^^^ ^'^^^ ^^ Europe, was growing 
century. impatient of the cramped life and re- 
stricted thought of an earlier time ; she was already 
throbbing with that new life which was to find 
expression in the Renaissance. The old mediaeval 
world yet remained, but everywhere in the midst of 
its most characteristic institutions we can see the 
beginning of the new order destined to take its 
place. 

Thus chivalry, by which in the Middle Ages the 
mere barbarian fighter of earlier times became the 
knight, was at the height of its splendor. 
^' Our first great poet lived and breathed 
in the very air of knightly romance, he knew in his 
youth the dazzling and luxurious court of the third 
Edward, a king who delighted in the display of tour- 
naments and who founded the Order of the Garter. 
As we read of Sir John Chandos and of Bertrand du 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 71 

Guesclin In Froissart's Chronicles of the Hundred 
Years* War^^ this brilliant and lavish reign seems 
crowded with knightly feats. Yet, mediaeval as this 
world of Chaucer seems to us, as we imagine the 
gray turrets of its moated castles, the streaming 
plumes, the shining armor, and all the picturesque 
pageantry of its real or mimic war, agencies were at 
work undermining the whole fabric of its chivalry. 
Gunpow^der, first used in Europe at the battle of 
Crecy in 1346, was destined to revolutionize the 
mode of warfare, and help to make castle and armor 
things of the past. 

In England new forces were active in the mass of 
the people, which threatened to change the whole 
order of society. In 1349, England was desolated by 
a loathsome and deadly plague, the Black 
Death, through which about half the 
entire population miserably perished. The farms 
were untilled, the crops scanty, and famine followed 
pestilence. The country was filled with vagrants 
driven by idleness and starvation to beggary or theft. 
The organization of labor was unsettled, and iron 
laws were passed which made matters worse. Then 
came bitter denunciations and riotous uprisings 
against all those class distinctions which had been 
accepted almost as part of the divinely arranged 
order. 

John Ball, the mad priest of Kent, thundered 
against those who *^are clothed in rich stuffs, orna- 
mented with ermine, who dwell in fine houses w^hile 

* Tlie Hundred Yearn' War (1338-1453), a war between 
France and England. 



72 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

we must brave the wind and rain in our labors in tte 

fields." * Our dream of fourteenth century chivalry 

is thus broken by the stormy complaint of the poor, 

the prelude of modern democracy. 

In religion, too, the century is full of signs of a 

coming change. The Church no longer inspired that 

devotion which characterized the davs 
The Cliurcli. /. i t t t ^ 

oi the earlier crusader. In 1309 the 

Pope removed from Rome to Avignon, and the rev- 
erence and divinity which had hedged him about, as 
the declared " Vicar of Christ on Earth," were greatly 
lessened when men saw him the creature of the grow- 
ing power of France. The multiplying corruptions 
in the Church itself, the sordidness and lack of 
spirituality in its clergy, moved earnest men to scorn 
and satire. In all this we see signs of the coming 
Reformation. 

The old scholastic learning of the Middle Ages yet 
lingered in Chaucer's England. The Oxford Clerk, 

in the Canter'bury TaleSy delights in 
^arninff Aristotle, an author of first importance 

in the old education of the monastic 
schools. Yet a new learning has already arisen in 
Italy, and in the work of Chaucer himself has en- 
tered English literature. Twenty years before the 
birth of Chaucer, Dante — the first supremely great 
poet since the classic writers — had died in exile in 
Ravenna, leaving for all time the expression of the 
soul of mediaeval Christendom in the -Divine Comedy. 
When Chaucer was a year old, Petrarch, the son- 
neteer of Laura, a poet and scholar who was a great 
* Froissart. 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 73 

leader in the new way of feeling and thinking, was 
crowned with laurel at Rome. Boccaccio was pour- 
ing out, in the prose tales of his Decamerone^ the 
world's new delight in the beauty and good things 
of this life. 

This threefold change, which marked the breaking 
up of the mediaeval and the beginning of the modern 
world, expressed itself in England in the works of 
three great writers. The social movement found its 
mouthpiece in William Langland, 1332-1400 ; the 
new religious spirit in Wyclif, while the new learn- 
ing of Italy enters into the verse of Geoffrey Chaucer. 

The well-nigh hopeless cry of the people against 
the social evils and a corrupt Church goes up in 
the Vision of Piers Plowman^ of Lang- 

JjaiIlgl3iIlCl S 

land. The poet falls asleep and sees in *' Piers 
a vision the world — his distracted Eng- I*lowman.'* 
lish world — as a " fair field full of folk." There are 
plowmen, the fruit of whose toil the gluttons waste ; 
men in rich apparel, chafferers, lawyers who will not 
open their mouths except for gold, pardoners from 
Rome, who traffic with the people for pardons, and 
divide with the parish priest the silver of the poor. 
The world makes a pilgrimage to seek Truth, and finds 
a guide in Piers, a plowman, at work in the fields. 
He bids them wait until he has finished his half-acre, 
then he will lead them. " The equality of all men 
before God, the gospel of labor — these are the two 
great doctrines found in this poem." * 

In religion John Wyclif, by his fearless attack on 
* Green's History of the English People^ vol. i. p. 442. 



74 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the ill-gotten wealth and corruptions of the Churchy 
by certain of his religious doctrines, and 
by his translation of the Bible (1380), 
stands as the greatest mouthpiece of the new spirit 
and the herald of the Reformation. Wyclif, too, by 
giving up the Latin of the mediaeval schoolmen, and 
speaking directly to the people in homely English, 
shows us that learning was ceasing to be the 
exclusive possession of priest and clerk. 

Finally, the new learning of Italy colors the verse 
of Chaucer, and mingles with its mediaeval hues. 
In his work, more than in that of any 
other writer, this crowded fourteenth 
century survives for us. There, indeed, its men and 
women breathe and act before us — alive veritably to- 
day beyond the power of five centuries of time and 
change. 

• GEOFFREY CHAUCER. — 1340 (?)-1400 

Our knowledge of Chaucer's life is meager and 
fragmentary ; many points are uncertain, and much 
left to conjecture. Yet Chaucer is real to us through 
his books, and the little we do know of his life is 
remarkably significant of its general character. 

Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of John Chaucer, a 
wine merchant on Thames Street, was born in Lon- 
don about 1340. As a boy he learned something 
of the court, for he was page in the household of 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward 
III. As a youth he knew something of war and 
camps, for he took part in a campaign in France in 
1359, probably as an esquire, was taken prisoner and 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 75 

jPansomed. Attached to the court, he was sent on 
diplomatic missions to various foreign countries. In 
1373 he went to Genoa to arrange a commercial 
treaty, and remained in Italy about a year. By this, 
and by a later journey to Italy, he was brought 
directly under the influence of that new learning 
which was to re-create the mind of Europe. Here, 
too, he probably met Petrarch, its greatest living 
representative. Two years later he was given a posi- 
tion in the custom house at London. In 1386 he was 
returned to Parliament as Knight of the Shire of 
Kent, but in the same year lost his place as Comp- 
troller of the Customs, in the absence of his patron, 
John of Gaunt — the '^ time-honored Lancaster" of 
Shakespeare's Richard II, For a while he knev. 
poverty, bearing it with characteristic good humor. 
On the accession (1399) of Henry IV., the son of his 
former patron, his fortunes again improved ; he was 
granted an annuity of forty marks, but died on the 
25tli of the October following ; closing the ej^es 
which had seen so much, in his quiet home at West- 
minster, while the dawn grows over Europe and the 
new century is born. 

Little as we know of Chaucer, we can see at how 
many points he touched the varied and brilliant life 
of his time, knowing it not merely as an 
onlooker, but as a practical man of ^anoftlie 
affairs, himself an actor in its restless 
activities. He was a man of the world, but one who 
added to the quick eye and retentive mind the poet's 
tenderness and sympathy with suffering, the philoso- 
pher's large-minded toleration of human follies and 



76 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

mistakes. And Cliaucer, like Shakespeare, learned 

not only from life, but from books. He 
Student. . -, . n \ - 

would return irom his work at the cus- 
tom house to read until his ej^es were "dazed and 
dull.'^ "VVe may agree with Lowell that in Chaucer's 
description of the Oxford Clerk the poet writes out 
of the fullness of a personal sympathy. 

** For he hadde geten him yit no benefice, 
Ne was so worldly for to have office. 
For him was levere have at his beddes heede 
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reede, 
Of Aristotle and his pliilosophie, 
Then robes riche, orfithele or gay sawtrie," 

Chaucer the poet had so absorbed the tales of trou- 
vere and Italian, as to make them live anew in his 
verse on English soil. Chaucer the student trans- 
lated Boethius' Co7isolatio7i of Philosophy and wrote 
a scientific treatise on the astrolabe.* 

Lover of men and lover of books, Chaucer is no less 
Love of ^^^^ lover of nature, for her alone delight- 
nature, ing to leave his studies. 

** And as for me, though that I kon but lytee, 
On bokes for to rede I me delyte, 
And to hem yive I feyth and ful credence 
And in myn berte have hem in reverence 
So hertely, that ther is game noon. 
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, 
But yt be seldom on the holy day. 
Save, certeynly, when that the moneth of May 

*The influence of this study of Boethius is traceable in 
Chaucer's poetry ; ^. ten Brink's English Literature (vol. ii). 
For Boethius, v. p. 43, supra. 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 77 

Is comen, and that I here the foules synge 
And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge, 
Farewel my boke and my devocioun ! " * 

As we might expect, it is the gayer moods of 
nature in which Chaucer's light-hearted and kindly 
temperament finds the greatest solace. The charac- 
teristic Chaucerian landscape is glorious in sunshine, 
the grass grows soft and thick under our feet, and 
the twitter of birds is everywliere ; all the world is 
new — washed in the freshness of the springtin^e. 

" A gardyn saw I ful of blospemy bowys 
Up-on a river in a grene mede, 
There as ther swetnesse everemore i-now is ; 
With flouris white, blewe, and yelwe, and rede. 
And colde welle-stremys no-thyng dede. 
That swemyn ful of smale fischis lite, 
With fynnys rede and skalis sylvyr bryghte. 
On every bow the bryddis herde I synge, 
With voys of aungel in here armonye ; " — f 

Not onh^ in these more extended descriptions, but 
in many a casual and passing allusion there is tliat 
wholesome and vernal freshness which fills us witli 
an ever new delight; the clieerful sun is rising, the 
east laughs with light, and in the groves the silver 
drops are yet 

*' honging on the leves." J 
Indeed, as Longfellow says: 

'* He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote 
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age 

* Prologue to Legende of Good Women. 
f The Parlement of Foules. 
X The KnighVs Tale. 1. 638. 



78 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Made beautiful with song ; and, as I read 
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note 
Of lark and linnet, and from every page 
Rise odors of plowed field or flowery mead." * 

A love of the gladness and beauty of God's world, 
30 childlike and spontaneous, rests and refreshes us. 
Something tells us that the life of the poet who felt 
thus was at heart sound and good. There are sacred 
depths in the rare nature of tliis seeming man of the 
world, who takes what life sends " in buxomnesse," 
who, unlike so many moderns, makes no display of 
what he is and feels. If we would get some hint of 
that side of Chaucer which was not "the world's 
side," let us think of him as he describes himself in 
one of his poems, going out alone into the meadows 
in the stillness of the early morning and falling on 
his knees to greet the daisy. 

" The father of English poetry " knew no English 
masters in his art to whom he could turn for help. 
Chaucer's early training tended to 
wks^^'^ identify him with the life and literary 
standards that then prevailed at court, 
and there both Edward III. and Queen Philippa 
favored the language and literature of France, even 
liaving French poets and " minestrels " in their 
employ. Among the court circles the old literature of 
England had no place. So pronounced was this for- 
eign tone, that John Gower (1325(?)-1408), though 
English by birth, wrote Ballades and a poem called the 
Speculum Meditantis in French, apologizing for his 
shortcomings in language ^^parceque je suis Anglais,^^ 
* Sonnet on Chaucer. 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 7% 

Chaucer's spiritual lineage therefore does not carrj 
us to Caedmon or Cynewulf, but to Guillaume de 
Lorris, Guillaume de Machault, and other poets of 
France. His studies carried him also to the Latin 
literature of England during the preceding cen- 
turies : Monmouth's History of JBritaiii, or tlie 
caustio verse of Walter Map, and to Vergil, Ovid, 
and such other classical writers as were commonly 
known to the student of his time. The work of a 
young poet, produced under such conditions, and 
addressed to a courtly audience, French by taste as 
by literary tradition, could hardly fail to take color 
from such surroundings. Especially in his early 
poems, Chaucer is "an English trouv^re.'^^ He 
begins his work as a translator or imitator of the 
French. A French devotional poem is the original 
of his A. B, C; a famous French love poem of his 
Romance of the Rose * his Dethe of Blaunche the 
Duchesse (1369), while not a translation, is distinctly 
French in poetic manner. But to the literary 
influences about Chaucer during the earlier half of 
his life another was to be added. By his two 
journeys to Italy (1372-73, 1378-79), the first under= 
taken when he was about thirty, Chaucer was 
brought into direct and vital contact with a mighty 
literature, the impact of which was from that time 
to be more and more strongly felt on the intellectual 
development of Europe. Hence in Chaucer's later 
works we find many results of liis loving study of 
the three great masters of this rising literature of 
Italy. Thus, Troilus and Cressida, by far his 
longest poem, is largely based on Boccaccio's 



80 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUKE 

Filostrato. The House of Fame contains reminife- 
oences of Dante, while two of the finest of the 
Canterbury Tales^ those told by the Knight and the 
Clerk, are based respectively on works of Boccaccio 
and of Petrarch, " the laureat poete," 

** Whose rhetorique sweete 
^nlumiaed al Itaille of poetrie/' 

But we must be careful not to think of Chr.^cef 
as a mere imitator or borrower. The literaiurii 
of the world belongs to the supreme poet by right 
of eminent domain. What a great poet borrows 
is transformed by the personality of his individual 
genius. It is not merely because he lived an€[ 
wrote in England that w^e think of Chaucer as 
inherently English, and feel that in s/^irit he is 
akin to the greatest and most representaliye poet of 
his race. Wliether he borrowed from France or from 
Italy Mie made a story his own, re-crearing it and 
breathing into it the breath of his own spirit. Like 
his nation, he is capacious and strong enough to take 
from others only to enrich without destroying his 
own individuality. Before Chaucer, there had been 
an Anglo-lSTorman literature, and the beginning of a 
popular English literature ; but no great poet liad 
yet combined the spirit of the two. 

It is one of the glories of Chaucer that in his work 
so much is combined and harmonized for the first 
time. He has the Celtic lightness and humor witli 
the English solidity and common sense ; he has the 
literary traditions of the Norman trouvhre with the 
new thought of the Italian ; he expresses in his verj 



GEOFFKEY CHAUCER 81 

language the end of a period of amalgamation, and 
all these elements are made one by the power and 
personality of his genius. 

No illustration of this could be better than that 
given by Lowell : " Chaucer, to whom French must 
have been almost as truly a mother-tongue as Eng- 
lish, was familiar with all that has been done by 
troubadour or troiivere. In him we see the first 
result of the Norman yeast upon the home-baked 
Saxon loaf. The flour had been honest, the paste 
well kneaded, but the inspiring leaven was wanting 
till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer works still 
in the solid material of his race, but with what airy 
lightness has he not infused it ? Without ceasing to 
be English, he has escaped from being insular." * 

Thus Chaucer in more than one way stands for the 
end of the period of preparation. Like his century 
he is partly of the Middle Ages and partly of the 
coming Renaissance, partly Norman and partly Eng- 
lish ; in his literary style as well as in his mixed 
language reminding us that he expresses the union of 
what had been separate elements, and that he is both 
the end of an old order and the beginning of a new. 

THE 

The latest and most famous work of Chaucer is a 
collection of separate stories, supposed to be told by 
pilgrims who agree to journey in com- 
pany to the tomb of St. Thomas a J^® "tS'' 
Becket at Canterbury. In a general 

♦Essay on *' Chaucer " in My Study Windows, by J. R. Lowell. 



82 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

prologue we are told how these pilgrims met at the 
Tabard Inn in Southwark, the district opposite to 
London on the other side of the Thames ; how they 
agreed to be fellow-travelers ; how the jolly inn- 
keeper, " Harry Bailly," proposed that each pilgrim 
should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and 
two returning. There are, by way of interlude, pro- 
logues to the several stories thus told, which bind the 
whole series more firmly together and recall to us 
the general design. The idea of stringing distinct 
stories on some thread of connection is not an 
uncommon one. Shortly before Chaucer, Boccaccio 
had written his JDecamerone^ a collection of stories 
linked. together by a very simple expedient. In it a 
number of gay lords and ladies leave Florence dur- 
ing the plague, and, sitting together in a beautiful 
garden, they amuse themselves by telling the tales 
that form the main part of the work. If Chaucer^ 
as many suppose, found the suggestion for the plan 
of the Canterbury Tales in the Decamerone, there is 
no doubt that he greatly improved on his original. 
Chaucer's work is founded on a pilgrimage, one of 
the characteristic and familiar features of the life of 
the time. With rare tact he has selected one of the 
few occasions which brought together in temporary 
good-fellowship men and women of different classes 
and occupations. He is thus able to paint the mov- 
ing life of the world about him in all its breadth and 
variety ; he can give to stories told by such chance- 
assorted companions a dramatic character and con- 
trast, making knight, priest, or miller reveal himself 
in what he relates 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 83 

The chief interest of the Prologue lies in the fresh- 
ness and trutli with which each member of the little 
party of pilgrims is set before us. As one after 
another of that immortal procession passes by, the 
intervening centuries are forgotten, the world about 
us recedes, and we ourselves seem fourteenth century 
pilgrims riding with the rest. It is a morning in the 
middle of April as we with the jolly company, thirty 
in all, with oiir host of the Tabard, Harry Bailly, as 
"governour," pass out of the square courtyard of 
the inn and take the highroad toward Canterbury. 
The freshness of the spring is all about us ; sliowers 
and sunshine and soft winds have made the budding 
world beautiful in tender green, and the joy of the 
sweet season in the hearts of innumerable birds 
makes them put their gladness into song. This time, 
when the sap mounts in the trees, and the world is 
new-charged with the love of life, fills us with rest- 
less desires and the spirit of adventure. 

** Thanne longen folk to gon on pilgrimages." 

Our little company is a strange mixture, men and 
women of many sorts and conditions. By traveling 
thus banded together the danger of attacks from 
highway robbers was lessened, and the holiday 
humor promoted by companionship. There rides a 
Knight, a good type of all that is best in the chivalry 
of the time, who has fought bravely in fifteen mor- 
tal battles. His hauberk is stained, for he has just 
returned from a voyage ; even the trappings of his 
horse are plain. In his bearing he is as meek as a 
maid. His son is with him, a gay young Squire, with 



84 INTEODUCTIOX TO ENGLISH LlTEllAXrEE 

cairled locks. He is a boy of twenty, overflowing 
with life and happiness, splendid in apparel, and 
expert in graceful accomj^lishments. 

•* Embrowded was lie, as it were a mede 
Al ful of fresshe floures, white and reede. 
Syngynge lie was, or floytynge, al the day 
He was as fresshe as is the moneth of May." 

After the Knight and the Squire rides their attendarit, 
clad in the green of the forester. He is the English 
Yeoman, type of those archers whose deadly *'*' gray 
goose shafts " broke the shining ranks of knighthood 
at Crecy and Poictiers."^ A very different figure is 
Madame Eglantyne, a coy and smiling Prioress, a 
teacher of young ladies, whose table manners are a 
model of deportment, whose French smacks of the 
'^school of Stratford atte Bowe.'' She is so sensitive 
that she weeps to see a mouse caught in a trap. 
Though pleasant and amiable, she affects court man- 
ners, and holds herself on her dignity that people 
may stand in awe of her. There ambles tliC ricl:. 
pleasure-loving Monk, with his greyhounds ; one of 
those new-fashioned churclnnen of the day who have 
given up the strict monastic rule of an earlier time. 
He cares neither for learning nor to work with his 
hands, but delights in hunting. 

The corruption of tije Church is also to be seen in 
the next pilgrim, a brawny, jolly Friar, licensed to 
beg within a prescribed district. In the thirteenth 
century the friars, or brothers, had done great good 

* The passage on the Bo^, in Green's History of the EngliBh 
People vol. i, p. 421, may be read in class. 



GEOFFREY CHAOCER 85 

in England, but by Chaucer's time they had grown 
lich and had forgotten the high purposes for which 
the order was founded. The Friar has no threadbare 
scholar's dress ; his short cloak is of double worstedo 
His cowl is stuffed with knives and pins, for he is a 
peddler, like many of his order.* 

*' Ful sweetely herde he confessioun. 
And plesaunt was his absolucioun ; 
He was an esy man to yeve penaunce 
Ther as he wiste lian a good pitaunce." 

After the Merchant, sitting high on his horse, and 
alwaj^s solemnly talking of his gains, comes the Clerk 
with his lean horse, and threadbare cloak. He is a 
philosopher, he has not prospered in the world, 

** For he hadde geten him yit no benefice 
Ne was so worldly as to have office." 

Then the Sergeant-at-Law, who seems always 
busier than he is ; the Franklin, or farmer, with his 
red face and beard white as a daisy ; he keeps open 
house, the table standing always covered in his hos- 
pitable hall.f 

Various occupations are represented by the Haber* 

*Wyclif writes of the friars: '* They become peddlers, 
bearing knives, purses, pins, and girdles, and spices, and silk, 
and precious pellure, and fouris for women, and thereto small 
dogs." (Quoted in Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life, p. 304.) 

f The Franklin held his land directly from the King and 
free of feudal service. In the fourteenth century the dining 
tables were usually boards placed on trestles, and were taken 
away after each meal. The Franklin's was '* dormant " ^. e., 
permanent. See Wright's History of Domestic Manners and 
Sentiments in England y p. 139. 



^e INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATUEE 

dasher, the Dyer, the Tapicer, or dealer in carpets 
and rugs, the Cook, who can '' roste and sethe, and 
boille and fry " and make " blankmanger " with the 
best. The weather-beaten Shipman, whose beard has 
been shaken by many a tempest, seems not quite at 
ease on horseback. The Doctor of Physic is a learned 
and successful practitioner, m4io knows the literature 
of his profession, and studies the Bible but little. 
He keeps all the gold he made in the pestilence. 

** For gold in physic is a cordial 
Therfor he lovede gold in special." 

Among all there is the buxom, dashing Wife of 
Bath, gayly dressed, with scarlet stockings, new shoes, 
and a hat as broad as a shield, and, in sharp contrast, 
the Parish Priest, the '^ poure persoun of a town," 
reminding us that, in spite of luxurious monks and 
cheating friars, the Church was not wholly corrupt. 

*' Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, 

And in adversitee ful pacient. 
• . • • • 

** He waitetli after no pompe and reverence, 
ITe maked him a spiced conscience. 
But Cristas lore, and bis Apostles twelve. 
He taughte, but first he folwed it him-selve.*^ 

But we must hurry to the end of this representa* 
tive company : the party is made up by the Plow- 
man, the Reeve, or steward, the Miller, who carries a 
bagpipe, the Summoner, an officer of the Law Courts, 
the Pardoner, or seller of indulgences, his wallet full 
of pardons, the Manciple, or caterer for a college, and 



GEOFFREY CHAUCEB 87 

last, the Poet himself, noting with twinkling eyes 
every trick of costume, and looking through all to 
the soul beneath. 

In this truly wonderful group the moving and varied 
life of Chaucer's England survives in all its bloom and 
freshness, in the vital power of its intense humanity. 
The man who could so fix for all time the " form and 
pressure " of his age must have looked at the world 
with wide open and clear-seeing eyes. Student of 
books as he was, and teller of old tales, we see here 
and elsewhere the shrewd observer and interpreter 
of life and character, the man with the poet's gift of 
fresh and independent vision. As we have said, the 
several stories in the Canterbury Tales are dramatic 
studies, as well as masterpieces of narrative, as each 
narrator unconsciously reveals something of his own 
character in the tale he tells. Thus the " Knight's 
Tale " is steeped in the golden atmosphere of chivalry. 
Theseus, journeying homeward with his bride, Hip- 
polyta, leaves her as a true knight should to cham- 
pion the cause of woman in distress. The whole 
story revolves about the supreme power of love, a 
doctrine dear to the heart of mediaeval chivalry. 

** Wostow nat wel the olde clerkes sawe. 
That who shal yeve a love re any la we ? 
Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan. 
Than may be yeve to eny ertWy man.*' ♦ 

At the call of this great and mighty god of love, 
the life-long friendship and affection of Palamon and 
Arcite are changed in an instant to rivalry and hatred, 

♦''Knight's Tale/' 1. 305, etc. 



88 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the solemn oaths which bind them to eaoh other 
unhesitatingly disregarded. In the tournament the 
devotee of Venus is made to triumph over the 
devotee of Mars. The story is rich and glorious in 
chivalric blazonry ; the gorgeous description of the 
tournament sparkles and glitters with the luster of 
that knightly and romantic world. Yet by the very 
source of this story we are reminded that Chaucer 
touched the new world of the Renaissance, as well 
as the vanishing world of the Middle Ages, and the 
luxurious beauty of the description of the temple of 
Venus seems to breathe the spirit of beautiful and 
pagan Italy, which was to find its English reflex in 
the delicious verse of the Faerie Queene. The Knight 
takes us into his world of the gentles ; so the drunken 
Miller, a consummate example of obtuse vulgarity, 
brutally strong and big of brawn and bones, inci- 
dentally acquaints us with life as he knows it, while 
the dafnty Prioress, speaking from her sheltered nook 
of pious meditation, tells her tender story of a 
miracle, and, as we listen, we seem to hear the clear, 
j^oung voice of the martyred child ring out fresh and 
strong. Among the most beautiful of the tales are 
those told by the Clerk and the Man of Law, two 
stories that in some respects may be placed together. 
Both reveal Chaucer's deep reserve of gentleness and 
compassion ; both reveal his reverential love of good- 
ness ; both bring before us, as the central figure, a 
patient and holy woman, unjustly treated and bear- 
ing all wrongs and griefs with meek submission. In 
the " Clerk's Tale" the unselfishness and wifely sub- 
mission of Griselda is placed in sharp contrast with 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 89 

the selfishness of her husband. The one gives her- 
-elf up first to her father and then to her liusband, 
naking her bed " ful harde and no thing softe" ; tlie 
)ther gives himself over wholly to present self- 
indulgence, even hesitating to take a wife because he 
rejoices in his liberty that 

** Seelde tyine is found in marriage.'* 

When two such natures are brought together, the 
more unselfishness yields — ^the more selfishness takes. 
The ideal of womanhood revealed in Griselda is 
eminently mediaeval, and Chaucer admits that he 
does not expect women of his time to follow her 
humility, adding that he tells us the story to show 

that 

'* Every wight in his degree 
Sholde be constant in adversitie. 
As was Griselde." 

Fortitude may likewise be taken as the patron 
virtue of the lawyer's tale, as indeed the name of 
the heroine, Constance, seems to imply. But the 
story also shows the divine care of innocence in 
adversity. Over and over again is Constance placed 
in peril, only to be rescued by the Divine hand. She 
stands on the seashore, betra^^ed and about to be set 
adrift with her newborn child. Even in the face of 
this deadly peril her faith remains unshaken : 

** He that me kepte fro the false blame 
While I was on the lend amonges yow, 
He kan me kepe from harm, and eek fro shame, 
In salte see, al thogh I see noght how 
As strong as evere he was he is yet now. 



90 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

" Her litel child lay wepyng in her arm, 
And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde, 
' Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee non harm !' 
With that hir kerchef of hir heed she breyde, 
And over hise litel eyen she it leyde, 
And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste, 
And in-to hevene hire eyen up she caste."* 

Words cannot be more simple or more tender, nor 
pathos more profound. We see all as in a picture : 
The sobbing country people crowding about the fair 
woman kneeling in their midst ; the sacred beauty 
of motherhood, of suffering, of heroic faith ; the 
boat ready at the water's edge, and, in melancholy 
perspective, the receding background of the waiting 
sea. In such passages we feel the truth of Mrs. 
Browning's words : 

** Chaucer, with his infantine 
Familiar grasp of things divine, "f 

The "'Man of Lawe's Tale " may be set beside 
Milton's Comus as the story of that virtue which 
can be " assailed, but never hurt." " Great are the 
perils of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him 
out of all ;" this may be said to be the text of the 
story of Constance. Yet, even the true joys of the 
righteous are not temporal, but eternal, and Chaucer 
continually pauses to remind us of the shortness of 
earthly happiness. 

"Upon thy glade day have in thy mynde 
The unwar wo or harm that cometh behynde," J 

* ** Man of Lawe's Tale." 

f Mrs. Browning's Vision of Poet$, 

$** Man of Lawe's Tale." 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 91 

Constance is at last reunited to her husband, but 
he only lives a year after the union. 

" Joye of this world for tyme wol nat abyde. 
Fro day to night it changeth as the tyde."* 

In Chaucer's work we see the expression of a 
rounded life, an equable and well-developed character 
that knew and loved men, books, and nature. Like 
Shakespeare, Chaucer seems to have been able to 
keep in just balance the ideal and the practical, able 
to combine the student and the dreamer with the 
successful ability of a man of affairs. There shines 
through Chaucer's poems that element of the highest 
achievement — personal greatness of character. He 
is truthful, putting down honestly and naturally 
what he sees ; he can enjoy life almost with the 
frank delight of a child, capable of laughter without 
malice ; and boisterous or coarse as he may some- 
times seem, he is at heart surpassingly gentle and 
compassionate. If such figures as the Wife of Bath 
flaunt themselves through his pages with noisy 
laughter and flaring garments, in them are also to be 
found the very flower of a pure and noble woman- 
hood. Few poets are so loving to little children, 
few so far from bitter or morbid complainings, ready 
to face what life sends with a cheerful and manly 



*' That thee is sent receyve in buxomnesse. 
The wrastling of this world asketh a fal ; 
Here is no hoom, here is but wildernesse. 

♦ " Man of Lawe's Tale." 



92 INTBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITER ATUEE 

Forth, pilgrim, forth ! forth best, out of thy stal ! 
Look upon hye, and thonke God of al ; 
Weyve thy hist, and let thy gost thee lede, 
And trouthe shal thee delyver, hit is no drede." * 

Finally, in his grasp of human life and in his 
handling of a story, Chancer shows a dramatic power 
which, had he lived in a play-writing age, would 
have placed him among the greatest dramatists of all 
time. 

But with all this breadth, there are certain ele- 
ments in Chaucer's England that find no utterance in 
his Vv^orks. Men and women of many 

Poet of the conditions are indeed found there, from 

court. . . 

the knight to the miller and the plow- 
man, and all are pictured with the same vividness 
and truth ; but breadth of observation is not of 
necessity breadth of sympathy. Nowhere does he 
show us the England of Langland, with its plague, 
pestilence, and famine, its fierce indignation flaming 
up into wild outbursts of socialism.! We may sup- 
pose Chaucer's ideal plowman to have been after the 
pattern of the one he describes in the Canterhury 
Tales : 

*' A trewe swinker and a good was he 
Lyvynge in pees and perfight charitee." % 

Chaucer was the poet of the court, the poet of 
those who dwelt in fine houses clad in rich stuffs, not 
of those who hungered in rain and cold in the fields. 

* Good Counseil. 

fSee ''The Pilgrim and the Ploughman" in Palgrave's 
Visions of England, 
X Prologue to Canterhury Tales, 



GEOFFKEY CHAUCER 9; 

He was the outcome and voice of the spirit of chiv- 
alry, in its class distinctions and exclusiveness as well 
as its splendor. 

His easy-going nature has no touch in it of the 
reformer, the martyr, or tlie fanatic. He is above all 
lovable and companionable, not withdrawn in the 
stern isolation of the highest souls, alone and awful 
on the mountain summit wrapped in clouds. He 
rather dwells at his ease at the base, in the broad, 
sunshiny world of green fields and merry jests^ 
and if the heights and the depths in Dante and 
Shakespeare were beyond him, we should be thankful 
for all we gain in his genial and manly company, 

STUDY LIST 
GHAUGEB AND HIS TIME 

1. Chaucer's Works. The following poems are sng-- 
gested for beginners in Chaucer, as fairly representative, and 
as suitable for introductory study : 

a. Prologue to Canterbury Tales, This is, perhaps, the most 
familiar of Chaucer's works. It is unique as a contemporary 
study of English Hfe in the foui-teenth century, and has great 
historic as well as poetic value. It shows Chaucer, as student 
and observer of humanity, at his best. Saunders' Canterbury 
Tales gives interesting comments on the various pilgrims, 
together with pictures of each taken from the Ellesmere 
MS. It is superfluous to speak here of the poetic charm and 
dramatic force of the "Prologue," but to appreciate it as a 
work of art should, of course, be the first consideration with 
the student of literature. It may also be profitably studied in 
connection with the contemporary social, political, and reli- 
gious life. Note especially, under this, condition of the 
Church; position and work of Wyclif ; cf, opening of Lang- 
land's vision of Piers Plowman ; the attitude of Langland, 



94 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Chaucer, and Wyclif toward religion, etc., etc. [For refer, 
ences on this point see present list, sections 3 and 4.] 

b, Tlie Knight's Tale, This story is one of those that 
shows the influence of Italy. It is the longest of the Canter- 
bury Tales and the most gorgeous in coloring. It is founded 
on the Teseide of Boccaccio, but departs from it in some par- 
; ticulars. '' The Teseide contains 9054 lines, the ''Knight's Tale '* 
2050, of which only about 270 are translated from the Italian 
and another 500 adapted. So that Chaucer left himself free 
play.'' (Pollard's Chaucer, 116.) It is probably the recast of 
an earlier poem, containing *'al the love of Palamon and 
Arcite," alluded to in Chaucer's list of his works in the 
Legende of Good Women. The action of the poem is nomi- 
nally laid in the heroic age of Greece (look up " Theseus " in 
Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Eonian Biography and 
Mythology, or some Greek history), but in tone and setting it is 
consistently mediaeval and romantic. ''Chaucer's whole story 
[" Knight's Tale "] breathes the atmosphere of a romantic tale ; 
the whole action of all the participating personages belongs to 
a world which is composed of very diiferent elements — antique, 
Byzantine, mediaeval — and which is, in an educational and 
historical sense, full of gross anachronisms, but which bears, 
nevertheless, a uniform poetic impress, viz., the impress of a 
fantastic period of the Renaissance." (Ten Brink's English 
Literature, vol. ii. p. 68.) As preliminary, study the descrip- 
tion of the Knight given in the "Prologue," and the conclusion 
of the " Prologue," which explains how the Knight came to tell 
the first story. The tale opens with Theseus' return from his 
expedition against the Amazons, he having wedded Ypolita 
(or Antiope), then queen. In what one of Shakespeare's plays 
does Theseus appear under the same circumstances ? Cf. 
Shakespeare's and Chaucer's treatment. Is there any similar 
thought or motive running through this play and the ' ' Knight's 
Tale" ? If so, compare or contrast the two works on this basis. 
More direct use is made of the *' Knight's Tale " in The Two 
Noble Kinsmen, attributed to Shakespeare and Fletcher, which 
may also be compared. Note reference to Chaucer in " Pro- 
logue " to this play ; v, also introduction to play in Rolf e's edi- 



GEOFI^REY CHAUCER 95 

tion. Why is the Knight selected by Cliaucer to tell this par* 
ticular story, rather than one of the other pilgrims ? What is 
the most powerful motive of action in Palamon and Arcite ? 
With what opposing obligations, or inclinations, does this 
motive conflict ? How is its supremacy shown ? Why is it 
more consistent with the plot that Palamon, rather than Arcite, 
should marry Emily ? Collect all the passages in which 
Chaucer dwells on the irresistible power of the motive of 
action above referred to, and state from them the leading idea 
in the poem. Is this leading idea characteristic of the Middle 
Ages or of the Renaissance ? What gives the poem its unity ? 
In what way does the ultimate success of Palamon illustrate 
this central idea and harmonize with the unity of the poem ? 
Note characteristic beauty of description of Emily walking 
in the garden, gorgeousness of description of the three tem- 
ples. *' The description of the temple of Mars is particularly 
interesting, as proving that Chaucer possessed a power of 
treating the grand and terrible of which no modern poet 
but Dante had yet given an example." (Marsh, Origin and 
History of the English Language, p. 423.) Note, also, descrip- 
tion of tournament. Can you recall any passages in later 
English poetry comparable to description of paintings in 
Temple of Yenus ? Note lavish Renaissance character of 
description of statue of Venus, and cf. passages showing the 
same spirit in Spenser's Faerie Queene. For "Knight's Tale " 
V. Morris' Chaucer's "Prologue and Knight's Tale," Saun- 
ders' Canterbury Tales, ten Brink's English Literature, vol. ii. 
c. The Cleric's Tale. This story also illustrates Italian influ- 
ence on Chaucer. It is taken from Petrarch's De Obedientia et 
Fide Uxoria Mythologica, and is in places an almost word for 
word translation. The story is an old one, and was once 
a great favorite (Petrarch said that no one had been able to 
read it in the Decamerone without tears), but the character of 
Griselda is so entirely a product of past social conditions that 
it is quite out of keeping with our modern ideas. Petrarch 
took his version of the story from Boccaccio's Decamerone, 
translating it from Italian into Latin. Chaucer tells us in the 
prologue to the Tale, that he learned it of Petrarch, and it 



96 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

is, therefore, probably a direct outcome of Chaucer's first 
journey to Italy. "We may conjecture," says Professor 
Skeat, **that Chaucer and Petrarch met at Padua early in 
1373 ; that Petrarch told Chaucer the story by word of mouth, 
either in Italian or French ; and that Chaucer shortly after 
obtained a copy of Petrarch's Latin version, which he kept 
constantly before him whilst making his own translation." 
(Introduction to Chaucer's' *' Prioress's Tale," etc., Clarendon 
Press). 

Read, first, description of Clerk in general '' Prologue," and 
''Prologue" to " Clerk's Tale," [Xote meaning of Clerk ; r. 
derivation in Skeat's Etyniologiccd Dictionary. "A learned 
man ; . . . a scholar ; . . . originally a man who could read, 
an attainment at one time confined chiefly to ecclesiastics 
[Archaic]," {Century Dictionary.) In prologue to '' Clerk's 
Tale," Petrarch is spoken of as a " worthy clerk.''] 

In this tale we have fine instances of character contrast in 
Walter and Griselda. Study these two characters separately, 
and note the skill with which they are placed in opposition. 
The character of Griselda is one that we find it difiicult to do 
justice to. We must remember, however, that the story 
belongs* to the Middle Ages, and that the feudal state of 
society and the position of women at that time must be taken 
into account, Griselda is bound to obey, first, because she is 
the daughter of Walter's vassal ; second, because she is 
Walter's wife, and in those days the wife's promise to 
* ' honor and obey " was strictly construed ; third, because she 
has taken a solemn additional oath to do her husband's 
will in every case without grudging {v. 1. 845, etc). More- 
over, resistance in Griselda's case would probably mean rebel- 
lion against lawfully constituted authority, uitJiout any reason- 
able chance of success. The following anecdote, taken by 
Thomas Wright from an old French writer, whose book is a 
product of mediaeval chivalry, helps to dispel rose-colored 
ideas, and illuminates the real position of women at that time : 
"The Chevalier de la ToiT Landy tells his daughter the 
story of a woman who was in the habit of contradicting her 
husband in public, and replying to him ungraciously, for 



GEOFFBEY CHAUCER 97 

which, after the husband had expostulated !in vain, he one 
aay raised his fist and knocked her down, and kicked her in 
the face while she was down, and broke her nose. 'And so,' 
says the knightly instructor, * she was disfigured for life, and 
thus, through her ill-fortune and bad temper, she had her 
nose spoiled, which was a great misfortune to her. It would 
have been better for her to have been silent and submissive, 
for it is only right that words of authority should belong to 
her lord, and the wife's honor requires that she should listen 
in peace and obedience.' The good ' chevalier ' makes no 
remark on the husband's brutality, as though it were by no 
means an unusual occurrence." {Domestic Manners and Senti- 
ments in England during the Middle Ages, p. 275). 

Boccaccio implies that the moral of the story is that virtue 
can be found in all conditions of life. ''What can we say 
then ? but that divine spirits may descend from heaven into 
the meanest cottages, whilst royal palaces shall produce 
such as seem rather adapted to have the care of hogs than 
the government of men/' {Decamerone, Novel X.). What 
does Chaucer tell us is his moral ? What further treatment 
has the story of Griselda received in English literature ? 
Name a ballad and a play on this subject. 

d. The Man of Lawe's Tale, 

e. The Nonne Prestes Tale. 

f. Good Counseil, — Complaint to my Purse, F. alsa extracts 
from longer poems in Ward's English Poets. 

2. Editions of Chaucer. For those poems contained in 
it, the edition in Clarendon Press Series, edited by Morris and 
Skeat, is recommended. For complete edition Bell's or Gil- 
man's may be used. Wright has edited Canterbury Tales, 
with notes ; more recent edition of same by A. W. Pollard. 

The most satisfactory edition for the scholar will doubtless 
be that edited by Rev. Walter W. Skeat (Clarendon Press, 
Macmillan) and now in course of publication. This edition 
contains life of Chaucer, variorum readings of text "from 
numerous manuscripts," notes, etc Two volumes have been 
issued. 

There are numerous modernizations of Chauoer, also prose 



98 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUBE 

paraphrases, some of the latter designed for youDg readers, 
Cltaucefs Pilgrimage, Epitomised l>y ^Villiam Calder (Black- 
wood), gives '* Prologue" with prose paraphrase and prose ver- 
sion of principal tales. Mrs. Haweis' Chaucer for ScliooU is 
admirably adapted for young readers. 

3. Chaucer. Biography, criticism, etc. Convenient man- 
ual for general use is A. W. Pollard's Chaucer, in English 
Literature Primer Series: Macmillan. Lounsbury's Chaucer, 
three volumes, is a scholarly work of high order. See also, 
Lowell's essay on " Chaucer," in My Study Windows (indis- 
pensable); Ward's Life of (in English Men of Letters Series); 
Sandras' Etude sur Chaucer coiisidere comme Imitateur des 
Trouveres; Saunders' Canterbury Tales; Alexander Smith's 
*' Chaucer," in Dreainthorpe, not strictly reliable, but gives 
graphic pictures of chivalry. " The Pilgrim and the Plough- 
man," in Palgrave's Visions of England, p. 82, may be read 
with class. Ten Brink's English Literature, vol. ii., includes 
this period, v. especially for Chaucer. 

4. History, Manners, etc. Pauli's Pictures of Old Eng- 
land (valuable for social conditions, etc., in Chaucer's time); 
Jusserand's English ^Yayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century; 
Wriglit''s History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in Eng- 
land during the Middle Ages; Cutt's Scenes and Characters in 
the Middle Ages; Browne's Chaucefs England; Sir Gaicainand 
the Green Knight, Retold in Modern Prose icith Introduction 
and JS'otes, by Jessie L. Weston (1898), in Arthurian Romances 
Series; Lanier's Boys' Froissart, and Bulfinch's^^^<9/ Chimlry. 

5. Langland. Warton's History of English Poetry, sec. 8; 
Morley's English Writers, vol. iv. Piers Ploughman, a con- 
tribution to the history of English Mysticism, etc. (in translation, 
1894): Langland's Vision of Piers the Ploughman Done into 
Modern Prose with an Introduction, by Kate M. Warren (1895). 

6. Language. Marsh's Lectures on the English Language; 
Lounsbury's English Lauguage; Earle's Philology of the Eng- 
lish Tongue; O. F. Emerson's History of the English Language; 
Trench's English Past and Present. 



PART II 

PERIOD OF ITALIAN INFLUENCE 
I 400- I 660 



CHAPTER I 

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 
THE COMING OF THE NEW LEARNING TO ENGLAND 

The century following the death of Chaucer is 
generally regarded as " the most barren " in the his- 
tory of the literature. Indeed, after the year 1400, 
we find little evidence of a fresh and vigorous life in 
English literature until the year 1579, when Spenser's 
Shepherd^ Calendar w^s given to the world. Yet the 
fifteenth century is, nevertheless, of far-reaching im- 
portance in the history of England's mental growtli. 
It was a time of national education. If England did 
not produce great literature, she received from many 
sources new thoughts and impulses^ which replen- 
ished and broadened her life, and which later found 
expression in her literary work. In the fifteentli 
century England passed definitely out of the bounds 
of the Middle Ages and came to share as a na- 
tion in the inspiration of the Renaissance, which, 
in the Century before, only such rare individual 

09 



100 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

minds as Chaucer and Wyclif bad known by antici- 
pation. The feudal society of the Middle Ages was 
finally shattered in England by the Wars of the 
Roses (1455-1485), in vrhich great num- 

The new ^^^.^ ^^f ^|^g ^j^j nobility perished. The 
learning. . "^ / 

outworn scholastic learning, the relic of 

the mediaeval monastic schools, was cast aside^ p.nd 
the reorganization of the entire educational sysi,em 
of England, according to the advanced ideas of Itaiy, 
was begun. In the early years of the fifteenth cen- 
tury the old learning had ceased to satisfy, and the 
new had not yet come. At Oxford the spirit of free 
inquiry stimulated by Wyclif had been sternly sup- 
pressed. Versifiers worked painstakingly after the 
pattern set by Chaucer ; but literature, like learning, 
waited the breath of a new impulse. So England lay 

** Between two worlds, one dead, 
The other i^owerless to be born."* 

Then the new life manifested itself amid the break- 

ing up of the old order. At Oxford, between 1420 

and 1485, new colleges were established, 

Foundation ^^^^ ^ librarv was founded bv Hum- 
of colleges. ^ 

phrey, Duke of Gloucester. About the 

middle of the century Henry YI. founded'King's, and 
Margaret of Anjou Queen's College, Cambridge, and 
in the same reign the great school of Eton was estab- 
lished. Three universities arose in Scotland between 
1410 and 1494. But even more important than the 
increased opportunities for education was the intro- 
duction of new methods and subjects of study. The 

* Matthew] Arnold's Stanzas from the Qrande Chartreuse. 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 101 

knowledge of Greek life and literature, almost wholly 
lost during the Middle Ages, had stirred Italy with 
the power of a fresh revelation. Chrysoloras, an 
ambassador from Constantinople, had begun to teach 
Greek in Florence in 1395, and upon the fall of 
Constantinople (1453) numbers of Greek scholars 
took refuge in Italy, bringing precious manuscripts 
and the treasures of an old thought which Europe 
hailed as " new." Italy became the university of 
Europe, and toward the end of the fifteenth century 
English scholars learned at Padua, at Bologna, or at 
the Florence of Lorenzo de' Medici, what they taught 
at Oxford or at Cambridge. Cornelius Vitelli, an 
Italian exile, taught Greek at Oxford before 1475; 
there, too, William Grocyn lectured on Greek in 
1491, after he had studied under Vitelli, and in 
Florence and Venice. Among Grocyn's hearers was 
the young Sir Thomas More, who was later to em- 
body the new spirit in his history of Richard III., 
and in the Utojna, We have thus an illustration of 
the way in which the nev/ learning sprang from 
Italian to Englishman, and from the English scholar 
to the English writer, thus passing out of the college 
into the wider sphere of literature. Among this 
band of reformers was Thomas Linacre, a learned 
physician ; John Colet, who studied the New Testa- 
ment in the original, and who started a system of 
popular education by founding in 1510 the grammar 
school of St. Paul ; Erasmus, the famous Dutch 
scholar, who taught Greek at Cambridge, and wrote 
at More's house his Praise of Folly ^ 

Side by side with the new learning came the new 



102 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

means men had found for its diffusion. Williai^ 
Caxton, who had learned the strange art 
m mg. ^£ printing at Bruges, returned to Eng- 
land in 1476, and set up his press at Westminster *' at 
the sign of the Red Pale." Here he published the 
Bides and Sayings of the Pliilosoi'htrs \\\~~). the 
first work printed in England. Caxton was no mere 
tradesman ; he was prompted bv a deep and unselfish 
lore for literature. His press gare England the best 
he knew — the poems of Chaucer, the ^lorte <T Artliur 
of Sir Thomas Malory, a noble book on which Ten- 
nyson based his Idylls of the King. Our first 
printer was himself an industrious translator ; the 
favorite of royal and noble patrons of learning. 
" Many noble and divers gentle men '' discussed lit- 
erary matters with him in his humble workshop ; 
some books he printed under tlie protection of the 
King himself ; Earl Rivers, the Queen's brother, a 
scholar 'and a pioneer of the "2Sew Learning,'' was 
his friend and patron. 

While the touch of Greek beauty and philosophy, 
restored and immortal after their burial of a thousand 

^, ,. vears, was thus reanimating' Europe, the 

rke discovery - ^ , ^ .1 :i i ' 

af the New horizon ot the world was suddenly en- 
World. ' larcred by a series of great discoveries. 
In 1486 Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hope ; in 
1492 Columbus penetrated the sea of darkness and 
gave to civilization a Xew World : in 149S Vasco di 
Gama rounded Africa and made a new path to India. 
England shared in this fever of exploration, and in 
1497 the Cabots, sent by Henry VII. '^to subduf 
land unknown to all Christians/' saw the mainland of 



THE REVIYAL OF LEARNING 103 

America. We can hardly overestimate the impetus 
given to the mental life of Europe by such a sudden 
rush of new ideas. The opportunities for life and 
action were multiplying : man's familiar earth was 
expanding on every side. The air was charged with 
wonder and romance ; the imagination of explorers 
was alive with the dreams of a poet, and cities shin- 
ing with gold, or fountains of perpetual youth, were 
sought for in the excitement of sensation which made 
the impossible seem a thing of every day. 

In the midst of all the new activity, Copernicus (6•^V- 
1540) put forth his theory that, instead of being the 
center of the universe, round which the 
whole heavens revolved, the solid earth P^rmcus. 
was but a satellite in motion round the central sun. 
While this conception, so startling to men's most 
fundamental notions, was slow to gain general 
acceptance, it was another element of wonder and of 
change. 

The Church was quickened by the currents of this 
new life. Men chafed at its corrupt wealth and 
narrow mediaeval views. The Bible was 
translated and made the book of the TheRefwma. 

tlOH. 

people. Luther, the type of the unfet- 
tered, individual conscience, faced Pope and Cardinal 
with his " Here I stand, Martin Luther ; I cannot do 
otherwise : God help me." This mighty upheaval 
shook England as well as Germany. The year of 1526 
saw the introduction of Tyndale's translation of tlie 
Bible, and eight years later the policy of Henry VHL 
withdrew the Church in England from the headship 
of the Pope. 



104 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Thus England came to share in the diverse activi- 
ties of the Renaissance, intellectual, maritime, and 
religious ; in the revival of learning, the 
discovery of the world, and the Reforma- 
tion. In the fifteenth century she had absorbed and 
stored up many vital influences ; early in the six- 
teenth century these slowly accumulated forces, these 
new emotions and ideas, began to find an outlet in 
the work of a new class of writers, and we reach the 
threshold of the Elizabethan era, the time when the 
Renaissance found utterance in English literature. 

EXPRESSION OF THE NEW LEARNING IN LITERATURE 

The first conspicuous example of the influence of 
Italy on English verse is found in the poems of Sir 
Thomas Wyatt and of Henry Howard, 
Wyatt and ^^^^ ^^ Surrey. These noblemen be- 
longed to the new class of " Courtly 
Makers,'' * poets of the court circle, in whose brilliant 
and crowded lives the making of verses was but the 
graceful and incidental accomplishment of the finished 
cavalier. Poetry was a court fashion, and Henry 
VIII., a patron of the new learning, was himself a 
writer of songs. Both Wyatt and Surrey were trans- 
lators as well as imitators of the Italian poetry, and 
their effect on literature was even greater than the 
intrinsic value of their work. They introduced the 
sonnet, which Petrarch had recently brought to great 

* Maker is a poet {cf. Gr. noirjrrjq — a maker, a poet), one who 
creates. Tli© words troubadour and trouvere involve the same 
idea of the poet as finder, or maker : v. Century Dictionary 
and cf. note on p. 28, supra. 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 105 

perfection — almost the only highly rrtificial poetic 
form ever successfully transplanted to England. 
Surrey did even more for the future of English poe- 
try. In his partial translation of Vergil's ^neid, he 
adopted, from the Italian, the unrhymed ten-syllable 
measure (iambic pentameter), which we call blank 
verse. This meter the dramatists of Elizabeth's time 
thus found ready to their hand. Used in the first 
English tragedy, the Gorboduc^ or Fer rex and Porrex^ 
of Sackville and Norton (1561), improved by Marlowe 
and by Shakespeare, it was made the epic verse of 
English poetry in Paradise Lost and Paradise 
Regained, But Wyatt and Surrey did more than 
use Italian meters and poetic forms ; they had 
absorbed, also, the sentiment and thought of Italy, 
and, in their songs and sonnets, deal with " the com- 
plexities of love," and kindred themes, according to 
the best Italian models. While we may weary of 
their conventional gamut of sighs and groans, we 
must think of these Courtly Makers as doing a great 
work by bringing to English poetry that new Italy 
which was the fairy godmother of Elizabethan litera- 
ture. The publication, in 1557, of the work of these 
two poets, in a collection known as TotteVs Miscel- 
lany, did much to popularize the new style of writ- 
ing ; and with that year the Elizabethan period may 
conveniently be said to begin. 

The extent and importance of Italy's influence in 
England, whether on education or liter- 
ature, can be appreciated only by careful Italian influ- 
study. 

" Every breeze was dusty with the golden pollen 



106 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of Greece, Rome, and of Italy." * Sir Thomas More 

wrote a life of Pico di Mirandola, a great leader in 

the new Italian culture. In Sackville's Mirror for 

Magistrates (1563) we recognize the influence of 

Dante, and the Faerie Qiieene of Edmund Spenser 

(1590) is aglow with the warmer and more prodigal 

beauty of the south, and filled with reminiscences of 

the romantic poems of Tasso and Ariosto. The same 

force was contributing to the growth of a great 

English drama, and Shakespeare himself was but one 

among many playwrights who took their plots from 

the Italian novels, and brought home to London 

audiences the glories of Venice or Verona. 

Througli the example and stimulus of Italy, the 

literatures of Greece and Rome were made a living 

_, , „ element in Eno-lish culture. Kot only 
The work of . ° . ^ 

the trans- did scholars and the fine ladies of the 
lators. court pore over their Plato in Greek, 

translators were busily at work making the great 
classics the common quarry for all who could read 
the English tongue. During the latter half of the 
sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries, 
Vergil's ^neid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, numbers of 
Seneca's plays, and Homer, in the famous translation 
of Chapman, were thus made English literature. The 
Elizabbthan writers delighted in a somewhat osten- 
tatious display of this newly acquired learning, and 
their works are often filled with classic allusions 
which we should now consider commonplace. But 
as a quickening power their effect was incalculable 
Shakespeare's use of Sir Thomas North's translation 
* Lowell's essay on *' Spenser," in Among My Book$, 



THE REVIVAL OP LEARNING lOf 

of Plutarch's Lives admirably illustrates the way 
in which the translator supplied material for the 
author. Out of North's version Shakespeare built 
his Julius Ccesar, Coriolanus^ Antony and Cleopatra^ 
and, to some extent, Tbnon of Athens. The litera- 
ture of Italy was likewise thrown open to the Eng- 
lish reader. Harrington translated Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso (1591) ; Fairfax translated Tasso's Jeric* 
salem Delivered (1600), while hundreds of Italian 
stories were for sale in the London bookstalls clus- 
tered about old St. Paul's. 

ELIZABETHAN EIS^GLAND 

The thought and imagination of England, thus 
expanding under the stimulus of the Renaissance, 
found many conditions in the reign of Elizabeth 
which favored their expression in literature. 

In the two preceding reigns much of the national 
force had been spent in religious controversies. 
Edward VI. (1547-1553) had forced -^^^^^^^ f^^^ 
Protestantism upon a nation not, as a religious per- 
whole, fully prepared to accept it ; secution. 
Mary (1553-1558) with a religious zeal as pathetic 
as, in our eyes, it was cruel and mistaken, had striven 
to persecute the people back into Roman Catholicism. 
In Elizabeth's reign we pass out of the bitterness 
and confusion of this warfare of religions into a 
period of comparative quiet. The religious and 
political difficulties w^hich beset Elizabeth, on her 
accession in 1558, slowly sank out of sight under her 
firm and moderate rule. Patience and toleration did 
much to soften the violence of the religious parties j 



108 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

the fierce fires of martyrdom, which had lit up the 
terrible reign of Mary, were cold, and the nation, 
relieved from pressing anxieties, was comparatively 
free to turn to other issues. The very year in which 
Shakespeare is supjDOsed to have come up to London 
to seek his fortune (1587) saw the final removal of a 
threatened danger by the execution of Mary Queen 
of Scots, while the year following England struck 
down the haughty menace of the Spaniard by her 
defeat of the Armada. 

But the reign was more than a period of relief 

from past struggles or persecution ; it was marked 

by a rapid advance in national prosper- 

Prospenty o* '^.y ^^^ ^y ^ widespread increase in the 

the people. n 

comforts and luxuries of life. Among 

the people there were many causes of contentment. 

Improved methods of farming doubled the yield per 

acre ; the domestic manufacture of wool greatly 

increased, and homespun came into favor. In many 

little ways, by the introduction of chimneys, of 

feather beds, pillows, and the more general use of 

glass, the conveniences of living were greatly 

increased. The sea, as well as the land, yielded a 

large revenue. Not only did the English fishing 

boats crowd the Channel, but hardy sailors brought 

back cod from the Itfewfoundland banks, or tracked 

the whale in the vast solitudes of the polar seas. 

England was laying the foundations of her future 

commercial and maritime supremacy. Her trade 

Growth of increased with Flanders and with the 

commerce. ports of the Mediterranean, and her 

merchant ships pushed to Scandinavia, Archangel, 



THE EEVIVAX. OF LEAENING 109 

and Guiriea. In 1566 Sir Thomas Gresliara built 

the Royal Exchange in London, a hall in wliich 

the merchants met as the Venetians in their Rialto. 

Toward the end of the sixteenth century the famous 

East India Company was established. 

With the ease and wealth that sprang from this 

increasing prosperity came that delight in beauty, 

that half-pagan pleasure in the splendid 

adornments of life, which characterize ThespieHdor 

. . 0^ life* 

the Italian Renaissance. Life, no longer 

shut within the heavy masonry of the feudal castle, 
ran glittering in the open sunshine. Stately villas 
were built, with long gable roofs, grotesque carvings, 
and shining oriels, and surrounded with the pleached 
walks and the terraces, the statuary and the fountains 
of an Italian garden. 

The passion for color showed itself among the 
wealthier classes in a lavish magnificence and eccen- 
tricity of costume. The young dandy 
went " perfumed like a milliner," * and 
often affected the fashions of Italy as the Anglo- 
maniac of our own day apes those of England. In 
its luxury of delight in life and color, the natior. 
bedecked itself 

** Willi silken coats, and caps, and golden rings, 
With ruffs, and cuffs, and farthingales, and things ; 
With scarfs and fans, and double change of bravery 
With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery." f 

Moralists and Puritans bitterly denounced the ex« 

* King Henry IV., act i. scene 3. 

f Taming of ilie Shrew, act iv. scene 8. 



110 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

travagance and absurdities of the rapidly changing 
fashions. '* Except it were a dog in a doublet," 
writes an author of the time, " you shall not see any 
so disguised as are my countrymen of England." * 
But ridicule and reproof were alike powerless to 
clieck the nation's holiday mood. Men put off their 
more sober garments to rustle in silks and satins, to 
sparkle with jewels ; they were gorgeous in laces 
and velvets, they glittered with chains and brooches 
of gold, they gladly suffered themselves to be tor- 
mented by huge ruffs, stiff with the newly discovered 
vanity of starch. 

Shakespeare, whom we cannot imagine over precise, 
is fond of showing such fashionable vanities in an 
unfavorable light, and from more than one passage 
we may suppose him to have felt an intense, country- 
bred dislike for painted faces and false hair. On the 
other hand, when we read his famous description of 
Cleopatra in her barge, we appreciate how all this 
glow of color appealed to and satisfied the imagina- 
tion of the time, f The same spirit showed itself in 
the costly banquets, in tlie showy pageants or street 
processions, with their elaborate scenery and alle- 
gorical characters, in the revels like those with which 
Queen Elizabeth Avas received at Kenilworth (1575), 
in the spectacular entertainment of the mask, a per- 
formance in which poet, musician, and — as we should 
say— the stage manager, worked together to delight 
mind, eye, and ear. Milton has this splendor in mind 
when he writes : 

* Harrison's Elizabethan England, Camelot Series, p. 108. 
\ Antony and Cleopatra, act ii. scene 2. 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 111 

** There let Hymen oft appear 
In saffron robe, with taper clear, 
And pomp, and feast, and revelry, 
With mask and antique pageantry, 
Such sights as youthful poets dream 
On summer eves by haunted stream."* 

But the Elizabethan passion for dress and orna- 
ment is but a surface indication of the immense 
delight in life which characterizes the 
time. If we would appreciate the vital deliglit 
spirit of this crowded and bewildering in life. 
age, we must feel the rush of its superb and irrepress- 
ible energy, pouring itself out through countless chan- 
nels. England was like a youth first come to the 
full knowledge of his strength, rejoicing as a giant to 
run his course, and determined to do, to see, to know, 
to enjoy to the full. The fever of adventure burned in 
her veins ; Drake sailed round the world (1577-1580) ; 
the tiny ships of Hawkins, Frobisher, Gilbert, and the 
rest, parted the distant waters of unplowed seas. The 
buccaneers plundered and fought with the zest and 
unwearied vigor of the viking. When Sir Walter 
Raleigh was taken prisoner in 1603, he is said to 
have been decked with four thousand pounds' worth 
of jewels ; yet, courtier and fine gentleman as he 
was, he could face peril, hunger, and privation, in the 
untracked solitudes of the New World. With an 
insatiable and many-sided capacity for life typical of 
Ills time, Raleigh wrote poetry, boarded Spanish 
galleons, explored the wilderness, and produced in 
his old age a huge History of the World. In their 

* L Allegro, 



112 INTKODUCTiON TO ENGLISH LITER ATUEE 

full confidence of power men carried on vast literary 
undertakings, like Sidney's Arcadia^ Drayton's Poly- 
olhion, or Spenser's Faerie Queeiie, the magnitude of 
which would have daunted a less vigorous genera- 
tion. Nothing wearied, nothing fatigued them ; like 
Raleigh, they could ^^toil terribly." The young 
Francis Bacon — lawyer, philosopher, and courtier — 
wrote to Cecil with an inimitable audacity : " I have 
taken all knowledge to be my province." 

The center of all this full and active life was 

London, It was there that not only all the great 

dramatists, poets, and courtiers met, but 

Shakespeare's ^j^ere too came the famous travelers after 
London. 

their long and perilous voyages to take 

their ease in their inns. At the old Mermaid tavern 
in Bread Street gathered the great men of the age. 
Here Shakespeare, Jonson, Raleigh, and the rest 
drank their malmsey and canary like ordinary mor- 
tals, and smoked with wonder the newly introduced 
tobacco, discussing, doubtless, the latest play or poem, 
or listening eagerly to travelers' tales of the splendors 
of Italy or the marvels of the New World. 

We must remember that Shakespeare's, like Chau- 
cer's, London was a walled town, and that its great 
gates were still used. Just outside of the wall to the 
north lay open fields, dotted occasionally with houses 
and windmills. There was Spitalfield, Smithfield or 
Smoothfield, then a grassy plain where tournaments 
were held and where, under Mary, Protestants had 
been burned. Much of the ground about the city 
thus remained uninhabited. The population of 
London at this time is placed at about a hundred and 




L 
















Of one of the former 12 Companies is the Lo. Maj^or of the Cyte comenly chos 
streete. f. Aldermanburye. g. Barbican, h. Aldersgate streete. i. Charterhowse. 
p. S. Androwes. q. Newgate. r. S. lones. s. S. Nic shambels. t. Cheap syde. 
[No I in Map.] 2. Colmanstreete. 3. Bassings hall. 4. Hounsditche. 5. Leaden ha 
II. Paules. 12. Eastcheape. 13. Fleetstreete. 14. Fetter lane. 15. S. Dunshous. 16. 
21. Battle bridge. 22. Bermodsoy streete. loannes Norden Anglus descripsit anno 159; 

NORDEN'S MAI 
Engraved by Van den Keere. Photographed on wood from the codv ir 




Bushops g-ate streete. b. Papie. c. Alhallowes in the wall. d. S. Taphyns. e. Syluer 
borne Conduit. 1. Chauncery lane. m. Temple barr. n. Holbourn. o. Grayes Inn lane, 
bucklers burye. w. Brodestreete. x. The stockes. y. The Exchannge. z. Cornehill. 
Gratious streete. 7. Heneage house. 8. Fanchurche. 9. Marke lane. 10. Minchyn lane, 
es streete. 17. London stone. 18. Olde Baylye. 19. Clerkenwell. 20. Winchester house. 



LONDON IN 1593. 
British Museum by Stephen Thompson, and re-engraved bv W. H. Hooper. 



THE KEVtVAL OF LEAKKlNa 113 

fifty thousand people, so that wliile the city was 
already pushing out into the country in some direc- 
tions, the great bulk of the people could still be 
accommodated within the walls. 

The streets were narrow and ill-paved, and un- 
healthy from refuse and bad drainage, but they were 
gay with the bright and varied costumes of the people, 
and the splendid jewels of the nobles flashed in an 
atmosphere then undimmed by the smoke of count- 
less furnaces. The extravagant and gorgeous dress 
of the nobility presented a striking contrast to the 
plainer clothes or liveries of the lower classes. For 
in those days dress defined the rank, and one knew 
the apprentice by his round woolen cap and plain 
doublet, the lawyer by his loose black gown and 
tight-fitting coif, the yeoman by his russet home- 
spun, and could even tell a bishop's servant from a 
nobleman's by liis yellow livery. The streets rang 
with the cries of all kinds of peddlers, many of whose 
quaint verses have fortunately been preserved. Along 
the Strand, which stretched beyond the city wall 
parallel with the Thames, stood some of the finest 
houses of the great nobles — York House, where Bacon 
was born, Durham Place, where Raleigh lived, Somer- 
set House, Baynard's Castle, and the Temple, with 
its gardens. 

The majority of houses were built chiefly of wood, 
although brick and stone were beginning to be used. 
They were turreted, and had many gables and over- 
hanging upper stories. The fronts of the houses were 
often plastered and ornamented with coats of arms 
or curious designs of carved woodwork. All the 



114 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

handsome places on the Strand, whose beautiful gar- 
dens sloped to the Thames, had terraces and steps 
leading down to the water, and every great establish- 
ment had its own barge and watermen. At night it 
must have reminded one of Venice, when the ladies, 
masked and cloaked, came down by torchlight to 
meet their gallants waiting for them in silken-covered 
tiltboats. Indeed, by either night or day the Thames 
was a beautiful sight, for the river then ran clear 
and sparkling, while on it floated snowy swans, and 
brightly trimmed boats, tilled with a gay company, 
skimmed over its surface. It will help us to picture 
the immense number of these small boats when we 
realize that the watermen took the place of the cab- 
men of the present day. Instead of driving one 
took a boat, and at a certain ferry the passer by is 
eaid to have been hailed by the cry : 

** Twopence to London Bridge, threepence to the Strand, 
Fourpence, sir, to Whitehall Stairs, or else you'll go by 
land." 

The same old London Bridge, which we noted in 
Chaucer's time, was still standing, but many houses 
and shops had been added to those it then contained. 
These were built with their rear overhanging the 
water, which rushed through the arches beneath them 
with great rapidity. The famous painter, Hans 
Holbein, who came to England in Henry VIII. 's 
time, occupied one of these houses, and must have 
seen many striking pictures pass his door. The 
tower which stood before the drawbridge had been 
elaborately rebuilt by Elizabeth and called Nonesuch 



THE REVIYAL OF LEARNING 115 

House, and on its battlements was now displayed a 
ghastly row of the heads of traitors and criminals. 

But to make our mental picture complete, we must 
repeople these scenes with the rush of life ; the nave 
of St. Paul's is filled with gossiping throngs, the 
Thames with its pleasure-seekers, the theaters packed 
with noisy spectators. If we can but make all this 
alive again in our imagination, we shall realize that 
to live in Shakespeare's London was to touch at every 
point all the crowded activities of the time. 

And all this young life, with its varied spheres 
of action, was still further quickened by a deep 
national pride in the growing greatness 
of England, and by a feeling of chiv- p^l?^^ 
alric loyalty to the Queen. Religious 
differences gave way before a common bond of patri- 
otism. The men that faced "the Great Armada" 
were united by a common hatred of Spain, a com- 
mon devotion to England and to her Queen. The 
destruction of this huge armament made every 
English heart beat with a new pride of country 
that became a moving power in the literature of the 
time. We feel the exultant thrill of this triumph in 
those stirring words in Shakespeare's Kiiig John: 

" This England never did, nor never shall. 
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
But when it first did help to wound itself. 
Now these her princes are come home again. 
Come the three corners of the world in arms, 
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue 
\i England to itself do rest but true."* 

* King John, act v. scene 7. 



116 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATUEE i 

And tbe center of this new nationality was the 

Queen. Capricious, vain, and fickle as Elizabeth 

was, she awakened a devoted loyalty 

tlie Queen, denied to the gloomy and relentless 

Mary, or to the timorous and ungainlj^ 

James. She had a quick and practical sympathy 

with the new intellectual and literary activities of 

her time. The first regular tragedy was produced 

before her, and her interest helped the development 

of the struggling drama. 

* * The versatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled 
her to understand every phase of the intellectual movemeDt 
about her, and to fix by a sort of instinct on its highest repre- 
sentative/' * 

As we review the achievements of Elizabethan 

England we can see that the same magnificent energj^ 

which makes England prosperous at 
Summary. . ^ . . . 

home and triumphant upon the seas is 

^he motive power back of the greatest creative 
period of her literature. Looking at this great time 
as a whole, we must see England as " a noble and 
puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man 
after sleep and shaking her invincible locks — as an 
eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her 
undazzled eyes at the full midday beam."f Eliza- 
bethan literature is but one outlet for this imperious 
energy ; it is the new feeling for life that creates the 
drama as well as discovers kingdoms far away. This 
is indeed the Renaissance— the Re-birth. 

* Green's History of the EnglisTi People^ vol, ii, p. 819. 
f Milton's Areopagitica, 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 11 ? 

EDMUND SPENSER 

Edmund Spenser was born in London about 1552. 
There is some dispute as to his parentage, but lie 
appears to have belonged to a respectable Lanca- 
shire family. After attending the Merchant Taylor 
school in London, he went to Pembroke College, 
Cambridge, as a sizar, or free scholar, in 1569. His 
first published poems, translations from Du Bellay 
and Petrarch, appeared in the same year in a poetical 
miscellany called the Theater for Worldlings. The 
work is smooth and creditable, but the especial value 
of the poem is its indication of Spenser's early inter- 
est in the French and Italian literature. 

While at college Spenser became acquainted with 
Gabriel Harvey, who figures in the literary history 
of the time as a learned, if somewhat formal and 
narrow-minded critic, deeply interested in the devel- 
opment of English poetry. Spenser left Cambridge 
after taking his master's degree, in 15 76, and spent 
two years in the north, probably with his kinsfolk 
in Lancashire. Shortly before 1579 he became ac- 
quainted with Sir Philip Sidney, the mirror and 
pattern of the English gentleman of the time, then 
a young man of about Spenser's age. Tradition has 
it that Spenser wrote his Shepherd^ s Calendar during 
a stay at Penshurst, Sidney's country place. The 
poem received immediate recognition as a work 
which marked the coming of a new and original 
poet. It is an eclogue, or pastoral poem, in twelve 
books, one for each month. Spenser weaves into its 
dialogue some of his recent country experiences, 
ipcluding his unsuccessful suit of a lady he callg 



118 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Rosalind. He asserts his Puritanism, condemns the 
laziness of the clergy, and pays the customary tribute 
to the vanity of the Queen. In Elizabeth's time the 
great avenue to success was through the royal favor, 
and Spenser tried to push his fortunes at court 
through his friend Sidney and the Earl of Leicester. 
But ^Sidney was out of the Queen's good graces, and 
had left in disgust to weave the airy tissue of his 
Arcadia, 

Leicester had Spenser appointed secretary to Lord 
Grey, the new deputy to L'eland, and in 1580 the 
young poet left the brilliant England of Elizabeth, 
Avith its gathering intellectual forces, for a barbarous 
and rebellious colony. In this lawless and miserable 
country he spent the rest of his life, except for brief 
visits to England ; " banished," as he bitterly writes, 
" like wight forlorn, into that waste where he was 
quite forgot." 

Lord 'Grey was recalled in 1582, but Spenser re- 
mained in Dublin about six years longer as clerk 
in the Chancery Court. We find an unintentional 
irony in the fact that the former incumbent, from 
whom Spenser purchased the post, a certain Ludovic 
Briskett, wished to '^ vetii'e to the quietness of study." 
Spenser was rewarded for Lis services by a gift of 
the castle of Kilcolman, part of the forfeited estate 
of the Desmonds. There Sir Walter Raleigh found 
him : 

' * Amongst the coolly shade 
Of the green alders of the Mullae's shore,"* 

* Colin Clout Come Home Again, Read this entire passage^ 
beginning line 56. 



THE REYIYAL OF LEARNING 119 

and heard from the poet's own lips the first three 
books of his masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, Raleigh, 
with great and generous admiration, prevailed upon 
Spenser to accompany him to London, where the 
first installment of The Faerie Queene appeared in 
the same year (1590). Spenser remained in London 
about a year, learning the miseries of a suitor for 
princes' favors, and then returned in bitter indigna- 
tion to his provincial seclusion. 

Spenser's keen sense of disappointment and neglect 
found utterance in a passage in Mother HubbarcVs 
Tale (1591), which brings us near to the inner life of 
the poet himself. 

'' Full little knowest thou, that hast not Iride 
What hell it is, in suing long to bide : 
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent ; 
To wast long nights in pensive discontent ; 
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; 
To feed on hope, to pine with f eare and sorrow ; 
To have thy Princes' grace, yet want her Peeres ; 
To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeeres ; 
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares , 
To eate thy heart through comf ortlesse dispaires ; 
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne, 
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne. 
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end, 
That doth his life in so long tendance spend ! " 

It is not often that we are permitted to get so 
close to Spenser as in these words. They give us 
a glimpse into the true meaning of his experience. 
We feel how he hated his exile in Ireland, when we 
see how deeply his failure to leave it for England 
had wounded him, and we can estimate more justly 



120 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the effect of that dreary banishment on Spenser and 
his work. Shut out from all the excitement and 
rush of life that crowded Shakespeare's London, he 
turned from the repulsive coarseness and violence 
about him, to delight his soul in the languor and 
beauty of the Italy of the Renaissance. He lived in 
the dream-world of Ariosto and Tasso, and carried 
their gorgeous fancies into his Faerie Queene, 

After his return to Ireland in 1594, he married 
Elizabeth Boyer, '^ an Irish country lass," and paid 
her a poet's tribute in his Amoretti^ or love sonnets, 
and in the splendid Epitlialamion^ or marriage hymn, 
a poem filled with a rich and noble music. Here 
also, besides writing several minor poems, he com- 
pleted six of the twelve books that were to make 
up the first part of The Faerie Queene. About 1595 
Spenser again visited London, and in the following 
year published his Prothalaraion, or song before 
marriage. Apart from its poetical value, this poem 
has a personal interest. Through it we are able to 
determine Spenser's birthplace, for he speaks of 
London as 

*' My most kindly nurse, 
That to me gave this life's first native source." 

From it, too, it would appear that he was again an 
unsuccessful suitor at court. Spenser returned to 
Ireland in 1598, having been appointed sheriff of 
Cork. Shortly after, his house was burned and 
plundered in the rebellion of Tyrone. Spenser 
barely escaped with his wife and children. He soon 
afterward went to London as bearer of dispatche3. 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 121 

Here he died a few weeks later (January 16, 1599) in 
a lodging-house, a ruined and broken-hearted man. 
Ben Jonson wrote : " He died for lack of bread, in 
King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him 
by my Lord of Essex, saying that he had no time to 
spend thL^m." 

Spenser stands alone, the one supremely great un- 
dramatic poet of a play- writing time. In his youth 
he had, indeed, composed nine comedies, 
now lost, but the quality of his genius ^^gf^^^^^* 
was apart from the dramatic temper of 
his greatest poetical contemporaries. With a won- 
derful richness and fluency of poetic utterance, with 
the painter's feeling for color, and the musician's ear 
for melody, Spenser lacked the sense of humor, the 
firm grasp of actual life, indispensable to the success- 
ful dramatist. From one aspect Spenser's work 
expresses the spirit and deals wdth the problems of 
his time. In The Faerie Queene the struggle of the 
Church of England with the Church of Rome, a vital 
issue for Elizabeth and her people, is imaged by 
the opposing figures of the saintly Una and the foul 
and dissembling Duessa : what Spenser deemed the 
righteous severity of Lord Grey's Irish administra- 
tion is symbolized by Artcgal, the knightly personi- 
fication of Justice. But while current events or 
questions are thus introduced under the thin veil of 
allegory, while from time to time we catch the more 
or less distorted image of some great contemporary, 
Mary Queen of Scots or Sir Philip Sidney, from 
another aspect 77^6 Faerie Queene impresses us as 
remote from the substantial world of fact, enveloped 



122 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in an enchanted atmosphere peculiarly its own. In 
its visionary pages Spenser revives a fading chivalry, 
clothing it in fantastic but beautiful hues, at a time 
when the author of Don Quixote was about to ridi- 
cule its decaying glories with his melancholy scorn. 
Yet unreal and luxurious as The Faerie Queene may 
seem, Spenser had in it a distinctly practical and 
moral object. Under the mask of allegory he aimed 
to show the earthly warfare between good and evil, 
representing the contending virtues and vices by the 
different personages of the story. The general 
object of the poem was to ^' fashion a perfect gentle- 
man," by showing the beauty of goodness and its 
final triumph. But this moral purpose, overlaid with 
lavish color and confused by minor or conflicting 
allegories, is often lost sight of by the reader; some- 
times, we are inclined to think, by the poet himself. 
We are rather led to enjoy without question the 
beauty which delights the eye, or the rhythmical 
undulations of a verse which satisfies the ear. Moral 
purpose and allegory are alike obscured by the intri- 
cacies of a story, which, as we advance, reminds us 
of a river scattering its divided forces through count- 
less channels, until it ends choked in sand. But the 
imperishable charm of the poem is independent of its 
story or of its declared purpose. No poet before 
Spenser had called out such sweet and stately music 
from our English speech, and none had so captivated 
by an appeal to the pure sense of beauty. Spenser 
was a high-minded Englishman, a student of the ideal 
philosophy of Plato, wdth a touch of Puritan severity; 
but he had, above all, the warm and beauty-loving 



THE REVIYAL OF LEARNING 123 

temper of the Renaissance. In his solitary KilcoU 
man, amid the insecurity, pillage, and misery of 
unhappy Ireland, he felt the full fascination of Italy, 
an alluring southern magic, which to Ascham seemed 
Jike '^ the enchantments of the Circes." In The 
Faerie Queene^ the half -pagan and gorgeous beauty of 
the Italian Renaissance finds its most perfect expres- 
sion in English poetry, modified and restrained by 
Spenser's serenity and spirituality and by his English 
conscience. With him we are not, as with Chaucer, 
admitted to the mirth and jolly fellowship of the 
common highway ; rather, like Tennyson's Lady of 
Shalott in her high tower, we see in a glass only the 
passing reflection of knight and page. There are 
moods when this rests and satisfies ; then, again, we 
look down to Camelot at life itself, and the mirror 
cracks from side to side. 

STUDY LIST 
BFEN8EE 

i. The Faerie Queene, Bk. I., edited with notes and 
introductions by G. "W. Kitchin, Clarendon Press Series. 
(I>r. Kitchin has also edited the second book of The Faerie 
Qieene, published in a separate volume to correspond with the 
above). Selections in Ward's English Poets, vol. i. " Pro- 
thalaraion," *' Epithalamion." 

2. Biography and Criticism. Church's Life of Spenser, 
English Men of Letters Series, Lowell's essay on '* Spenser," 
in Among My Books. Green's History of the English People, 
vol. ii. 461-467. " One Aspect of Spenser's Faerie Queene." 
Andover Review, vol. xii. p. 272; i\ also *' Another Aspect of 
the Faerie Queene/' a reply to this article in same Review, vol. 
uv. p. 609. Grosart's edition of Complete Works of Spenser, \a 



124 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

diiP^cult to obtain but valualole tor advanced work ; it contains 
lift nd critical articles by eminent writers. Dowden's 
Transcripts and Studies contains essays on " Spenser, the Poet 
and Teacher '* and on the *' Heroines of Spenser." 

THE ENGLISH DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare is so much a part of our English civil- 
ization, we accept his gift to us so easily, and are so 
familiar with his greatness, that it is well 

Elizabethan ^^ remind ourselves of his place as the 
drama. . . ^ 

king of all literature. Thomas Carlyle 

wrote of him : " I think the best judgment, not of 
this country only, but of Europe at large, is point- 
ing to the conclusion that Shakespeare is the chief of 
aU poets hitherto ; the greatest intellect who, in our 
recorded world, has left a record of himself in the 
way of literature;"* and Emerson says, speaking 
for our own branch of the English people : " Of all 
books dependent upon their intrinsic excellence, 
Sliakespeare is the one book of the world. . . Out 
of the circle of religious books, I set Shakespeare 
as the one unparalleled mind." f Criticism cannot 
explain how or why the country-bred son of a 
Warwickshire traa^er should have possessed this 
supreme gift ; it is the miracle of genius ; but we 
can partly understano! now surrounding conditions 
favored the expression of Shakespeare's genius 
through a dramatic form. It is beyond our philoso- 
phy to analyze the nature of the mysterious force 
shut within a seed, although we may appreciate the 

* Heroes and Hero Worship; The Hero as Poet. 
t Mepresentative Men ; Shakespeare. 



THE REVIYAL OF LEAENING 125 

^nditions which help its development. Let us look 
at Shakespeare in the light of some of those sur- 
roundings in wliich Ijis genius worked. 

Sliakespeare did not create that dramatic era of 
whirt be was tlie greatest outcome ; he availed him- 
self of it. He lived in the midst of one ^^^^,,^,^^ 
q[ the world's few great dramatic partofadra- 
periods — a period equaled only, if matic period, 
equaled at all, by the greatest epoch in the drama of 
Greece. The Elizabethan drama was more than a 
national amusement. More fully than any other form 
of literary or artistic expression, it interpreted and 
satisfied the craving of the time for vigorous life and 
action. The theater was then, as in classic Greece, 
a national force, and a means of national education. 
An immense popular impulse was back of the Eliza- 
bethan dramatist. The wooden play-houses were 
daily filled with turbulent crowds, and scores of play- 
wrights were busy supplying the insatiable public 
with countless dramas. Shakespeare was sustained 
by a hearty, if not always discriminating, apprecia- 
tion ; he was stimulated by the fellowship, or rivalry, 
of a host of competitors. 

At first sight, this dramatic activity may seem 

to have sprung suddenly into being in answer to a 

new popular demand. The first regular Theprepara- 

tragedy was about the time of Shakes- ^??^°J!^® 
° '^ . Elizabethan 

peare's birth, and he was twelve years old drama, 
before the first regularly licensed theater was erected 
in England (1576). 

But the passion for life and action did not create 
the Elizabethan drama out of nothing ; it rathei 



126 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

transformed and adapted to its use a drama which 
had been established for centuries. This drama, 
brought into England some time after the Norman 
Conquest, had grown out of the need which the 
Church felt for some means of popular religious 
instruction. Short scenes, or plays, illustrating some 
legend of the satnts, or Bible story, were acted first 
by the clergy, aud later by the professional players, 
or by the Guilds. These Miracle plays, as they 
were called, because they dealt with wonderful or 
supernatural subjects, were popular in England 
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
and continued to be acted in Shakespeare's time. 
There were other kinds of plays, of which we need 
not speak particularly — the Moral play, an alle- 
gorical performance, intended to teach some moral 
lesson, and the Interlude, a short scene or dialogue, 
often played between {interludo) the courses at 
feasts. 'The earliest Moral play extant dates from 
the time of Henry VI., but mention is made of some 
still earlier. Interludes were composed by John 
Heywood, in Henry VIII.'s reign, and produced at 
court. The introduction of historical characters 
among the allegorical personages of the morality 
play — Riches, Death, Folly, and the like — was an 
important step toward the regular historical drama.* 
These early plays, although full of interest for the 
student, have, as a rule, but little poetic merit. To 
our modern eyes they often seem irreverent and 

* Bale's King Jdhan is one of the earliest examples of this, 
but it was probably not printed until 1839, and had little influ- 
ence. It is supposed to have been written in Edward VI/s 
reign. Mentiou is made of Interludes as early as 1464 (Edward 
IV/a reign). 



THE REVIYAL OF LEARNING 127 

lacking in dignity, but they pleased and instructed a 
simple-minded and illiterate audience ; they culti- 
vated and kept alive a taste for acting, and so pre- 
pared the way for a dramatic development, under the 
re-creating toucli of the new learning. 

In taking the further step from the Interlude to 
the more regular dramatic forms, England was helped 
by the revival of classical learning, and ^^^^ begin- 
by the example of Italy. Her first reg- ning of reg- 
ular comedy, the Ralph Roister Bolster ^^^^ drama, 
of Nicholas Udall, 1551, was written in imitation of 
the Latin comic dramatist Plautus; her first tragedy, 
the Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex^ of Sackville 
and Norton, while it dealt with a subject in th^ 
legendary history of England, followed the style of 
the Latin tragic poet Seneca. The numerous trans- 
lations from the latter writer* are a proof of his 
influence and popularity. But the forces creating a 
drama in England Avere too strong and original to 
make it a mere classic imitation ; it might borrow 
from Rome or Italy, but it had vitality and character 
of its own. 

Among the native forces thus shaping a new drama 

out of mediaeval Miracle plays or classic adaptations, 

was the intense patriotic pride which, in , ^ 

A -I • -i-r^iT Influence of 

the days of the Armada, stirred England patriotism on 

to more widespread interest in her his- growth of 

;\ ^ 1 • -Li. drama, 

tory, and to a warmer pleasure m the 

* Between 1559 and 1566 five English authors applied them- 
selves to the task of translating Seneca. Ten of his plays, 
collected and printed together in 1581, remain a monument of 
the English poets' zeal in studying the Roman pedagogue. 



128 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

image of her triumplis. The chronicle liistories of 
England were ransacked for subjects, and her past 
reviewed in dramas which were the forerunners of 
Shakespeare's great series of English historical plays. 
Among the early works of this class are, The Famous 
Victories of Henry T^, acted before 1588, Sir 
Thomas More^ about 1590, Tlie Troublesome Jttaign 
of King John^ printed in 1591, and The New Chron- 
icle History of King Leir and his Tliree Daughters^ 
Gonerill, Rag an, and Cordelia, acted two years 
later (1593). The English historical drama was 
thus a native growth brought into being by a 
genuine national impulse. It helps us to estimate 
the motive power of this impulse if we turn a 
moment from the drama to other forms of litera- 
ture. 

Patriotism, while thus molding the drama, was 
giving new life to history and verse. Learned men 
like Stowe, Harrison, and Holinshed, were embody- 
ing in prose painstaking researches into English 
history and antiquities. Holinshed and Harrison's 
JJescription and History of England, Scotland, and 
Ireland (First edition, 1577), a good example of 
Avorks of this class, supplied material to Shakes- 
peare for his historical plays. In the same way an 
enormous quantity of verse draws its inspiration 
from England and her history. 

William Warner set forth the history of England 
from the Deluge to the time of Elizabeth in a much 
read poem of ten thousand lines i^Alhionh England^ 
1586); Samuel Daniel dealt with English history 
in his Civil Wars (1595); later Michael Drayton 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 12d 

wrote liis Heroical Epistles^ his splendid ballad on 
the battle of Agincourt, and The Polyolhion (1613),— 
*' my strange Herculean toil " be appropriately calls 
it, a poetical description of England in thirty books, 
containing about one hundred thousand lines. All 
these writers were bidding people to 

** Look on England, 
The Empress of the European isles, 
The mistress of the ocean, her navies 
Putting a girdle round about the world." * 

From the historical plays already named we pass 
easily to a higher order of drama in the Edward IL 
of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's great prede- 
cessor, until we reach the climax of England's patri- 
otic drama in the work of Shakespeare himself. 

About 1580 we find the drama rapidly taking form 

in London through the w^ork of a group of rising 

dramatists, many of whom brought from 

the universities a tincture of the new Shakespeare's 
. . predecessors, 

learning. Prominent among these were 

John Lyly (b. 1553, d. 1606), the Euphuist, who 
produced a play before 1584 ; Thomas Kyd (d. 
about 1595), whose Spaiiish Tragedy was written in 
a ranting and extravagant style much ridiculed by 
Shakespeare and the later dramatists ; George Peele 
(b. about 1558, d. about 1598), Avhose chronicle of 
Edward I. (1593) holds an important place in the 
development of the historical drama ; Robert Greene 
(b. 1560, d. 1592), who, like many of his fellow play- 
wrights, led a wild and dissipated life, friendless, 

* Massinger, The Maid of Honor, act i. scene 1. 



130 IKTROBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

except in a few alehouses. In his Honorable His- 
tory of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay ^ Greene 
gives some charming scenes of English country life. 
The name of this unhappy writer will always be 
associated with his spiteful and jealous reference to 
Shakespeare as an " upstart crow, beautified with our 
feathers, that with his tiger^s heart wrapped in a 
player'^s hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast 
out a blanke-verse as tlie best of you ; and being an 
absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own conceyt, the 
only 'Shake-scene' in a countrey."* But, greater 
than all these in the tragic intensity of his genius 
and the swelling majesty of his " mighty line," was 
Christopher Marlowe (b. 1564, d. 1593), the imme- 
diate forerunner of Shakespeare. When Marlowe 
began to write, the form of the English drama was 
still unsettled. Under the influence of its classic 
models tragedy was inclined to be stiff, stilted, and 
formal ;* while in contrast with the work of the schol- 
arly and somewhat artificial writers there w^ere rude, 
popular interludes in jingling rhymes, full of rough, 
clownish tricks and jests, and without unity and pro- 
portion. Marlowe's fine touch did much to reduce 
this confusion to order. His verse is the finest before 
Shakespeare's ; and stormy and riotous as was his life, 
his work shows the true artist's unselfish devotion to 
a high and beautiful ideal. Marlowe was the son of 
a Canterbury shoemaker, and was born two months 
before Shakespeare. He graduated at Cambridge 
and came to London in 1581 to plunge into the vortex 

*In his pamphlet, a kind of dying confession. Greene's 
Groats Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Bepentance, 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 131 

of reckless and lawless life that circled round the 
theater. Passionate, unquiet, ambitious, Marlowe is 
spoken of as an atheist and a blasphemer. Before he 
is thirty he is stabbed with his own dagger in a low 
tavern at Deptford. The touch of the unknown, which 
he thirsted for like his own Faustus^ stops him in the 
midst of his doubts, his passionate longings, his defi- 
ance, his love-making, and his fame — and at length 
he is quiet. 

Marlowe's earliest play {Tambiirlaine, First Part 
before 1587, Second Part 1590) portrays the insatia- 
ble thirst for power, the spirit of the typical con- 
queror longing for '' the sweet fruition of an earthly 
crown." Another of Marlowe's tragedies. The Jew 
of Malta^ is generally thought to have furnished 
Shakespeare with some hints for his Shylock in The 
Merchant of Venice, Edward II. drew more firmly 
the lines of the English historical drama, wliile Dr, 
Faustus, with its magnificent bursts of poetry and 
the accumulating terror of its tragic close, is full of 
that overmastering longing for the unattainable which 
seems to have been the strongest characteristic of 
Marlowe's restless nature. In these famous lines from 
Tamburlaine, Marlowe himself seems to speak to us: 

** Nature, that framed us of four elements 
Warring within our breasts for regiment, 
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds ; 
Our souls whose faculties can comprehend 
The wondrous architecture of the world. 
And measure every wandering planet's course, 
Still climbing after knowledge infinite, 
And always moving as the restless spheres, 
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest — .** 



132 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITER ATUEE 

Plavs were acted in Eno-land long: before anv 

theaters were built. The Miracle plays bad been 

produced on temporarv scaffolds, or on 
The theater . . *" . 

a two-storied erection, something like 

a huge doll's house on wheels, called a pageant. Tlie 
Interludes or the early dramas were often played 
before the Queen or before some great noble on a 
platform at one end of the huge halls, perhaps at a 
great banquet or festival. But plays were a popular 
pastime also, performed in the open air in the court- 
yards of the inns ; and these square inn-yards, over- 
looked bvthe D^alleries or balconies which ran around 
the inclosing walls of the inn, are supposed to have 
furnished the model for the regular theaters. The 
growing delight in play-going seems to have pro- 
duced a general demand for more permanent and 
commodious accommodations. One building regu- 
larly set apart for the performance of plays is known 
tohavel^een in use before 1576. In that year the 
'^Black-friars Theater" was opened, the first theater 
reo-ularlv licensed. From this time the plavhouses 
rapidly increased, and when Shakespeare came up to 
London (about 15 87) a number were in active oper- 
ation. Shakespeare^s own theater, ^'The Globe," 
built 1599, lay across the Thames from London in the 
'^Bankside," a part of Southwark, close to the river. 
Other famous theaters of the day were '^ The For- 
tune," *'The Rose," and ^'The Curtain," at the last 
of which Marlowe is known to have acted. The 
theaters were of two kinds, public and private. The 
first were large six-sided wooden buildings, roofed 
over above the stage and thatched, the pit or yard 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 133 

being without shelter from the sun or r?iin. Galleries 
ran round the walls, as in the inn-yards. The stage 
projected into the pit, which was alive with disor- 
derly crowds w^ho stood on the bare ground, joking, 
fighting, or shoving to gain the best places. There 
was little attempt at scenery ; in the old plays we 
find such significant stage directions as these : ''Exit 
Venus ; or, if you can conveniently, let a chair come 
down from the top of the stage and draw her up." * 
In more than one place through the choruses of 
Henry Y, Shakespeare seems to be impatient of 
the slender resources of his stage-setting, as when 
he asks : 

**Cau this cock-pit hold 
The vasty fields of France ? or may we cram 
Within this wooden the very casques, 
That did affright the air at Agincourt ? " f 

And in the wonderful description that precedes the 
battle of Agincourt he complains : 

** And so our scene must to the battle fly ; 
Where (0 for pity !) we shall much disgrace — 
With four or five most vile and ragged foils, 
Right ill-disposed, in brawl ridiculous — 
The name of Agincourt. Yet, sit and see, 
Minding true things by what their mockeries be." t 

The private theaters w^ere smaller and more com- 
fortable than the public. They had seats in the pit 

* In Greene's ^^^A(??2Si^5— quoted by Collier, Annals of tin 
Stage, vol. iii. p. 357. 

\ Chorus to Heni^ V. act \. 
J Chorus to act iv. 



134 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and were entirely under roof. Performances were 
given by candle or torchlight, and the audiences 
were usually more select. The following description 
by Mr. Symonds gives us a vivid notion of the per- 
formance of a play in Shakespeare's time : 

"Let us imagine that the red-lettered play-bill of a new 
tragedy has been hung out beneath the picture of Dame For- 
tune [i. e., at "The Fortune" Theater, the great rival of 
Shakespeare's Theater, ' ' The Globe "] ; the flag is flying from 
the roof, the drums have beaten, and the trumpets are sound- 
ing for the second time. It is three o'clock upon an afternoon 
of summer. "We pass through the great door, ascend some 
steps, take our key from the pocket of our trunk hose, and 
let ourselves into our private room on the first or lowest tier. 
We find ourselves iu a low, square building, not unlike a 
circus ; smelling of sawdust and the breath of people. The 
yard below is crowded with simpering mechanics and 'pren* 
tices in greasy leathern jerkins, servants in blue frieze with 
their masters' badges on their shoulders, boys and grooms 
elbowing each other for bare standing ground and passing 
jests on their neighbors. Five or six young men are akeady 
seated before the curtain playing cards and cracking nuts to 
while away the time. A boy goes up and down among them 
offering various qualities of tobacco for sale and furnishing 
lights for the smokers. The stage itself is strewn with rushes ; 
and from the jutting tiled roof of the shadow supported by a 
couple of stout wooden pillars, carved with satyrs at the top, 
hangs a curtain of tawny-colored silk. This is drawn when 
the trumpets have sounded for the third time, and an actor in 
a black velvet mantle, with a crown of bays upon his flowing 
wig, struts forward, bowing to the audience. He is the 
Prologue. 

*' The Prologue ends. 

"The first act now begins. There is nothing but the 
rudest scenery ; a battlemented city wall behind the stage, 
with a placard hung out upon it, indicating that the scene is 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 135 

Rome. As the play proceeds this figure of a town makes way 
for some wooden rocks and a couple of trees, to signify the 
Hyrcanian forest. A damsel wanders alone in the woods, 
lamenting her sad case. Suddenly a cardboard dragon is 
thrust from the sides upon the stage and she takes to flight. 
The first act closes with a speech from an old gentleman 
clothed in antique robes, whose white beard flows down upon 
his chest. He is the chorus. . . The show concludes with 
a prayer for the Queen's Majesty uttered by the actors on their 
knees."* 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

There is on Henley Street, in Stratford-on-Avon, 
Warwickshire, an old house, with gabled roof and 
low-ceilinged rooms, which every year is 
made the object of thousands of pil- 
grimages. Here William Shakespeare was born, on 
or about the 23d day of April, 1564. His father, 
John Shakespeare, the son of a small farmer in the 
neighboring village of Snitterfield, added to his reg- 
ular business of glover sundry dealings in wool, corn, 
and hides, and possibly the occupation of butcher. 
His mother, Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy 
farmer near Stratford, was connected with one of the 
oldest and most distinguished families in Warwick- 
shire. The Ardens came of both Norman and Saxon 
blood, and thus represented "the two great race 
elements that have gone to the making of the typi- 
cal modern Englishman." f The influences about 

* Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama ^ by J. A. 
Symouds, p. 289. 

f V. Article on '* Shakespeare/' by J. Spencer Baynes, in 
EncyclopcBdia Britannica, ninth edition. 



136 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 

Shakespeare's youtli were such as .growing geuius 
instinctively appropriates to its use. Then, as now, 

Warwickshire was full of that abundant and peaceful 
beauty which has come to represent for us the ideal 
English landscape. In Shakespeare's day its north- 
ern part was overgrown by the great forest of Ardeii. 
a bit of primeval woodland like that which we enter 
in As You Like It; while southward of the river 
Avon, which runs diagonally across the county, 
stretciied an open region of fertile farm land. Here 
were warm, sunny slopes, gay with those wildflowers 
that bloom forever for the world in Shakespeare's 
verse ; low-lying pastures, where meditative cows 
stand knee- deep in grass, and through which wind 
the brimming waters of slow-flowing and tranquil 
streams. Stratford lies in this more southern por- 
tion ; but in Shakespeare's day the forest of Arden 
reached to within an easy distance of it for an active 
youth.' ZSTear his native town the young Shakespeare 
could loiter along country lanes, past hawthorn 
hedgerows or orcliards white with May, coming 
now and then on some isolated farmhouse or on the 
cluster of thatched cottages which marked a tiny 
village. There was Snitterfield, where he must haT-e 
gone to visit his grandfather ; Shottery, where he 
wooed and won Ann Hathaway. There, in the 
midst of this rich midland scenery, was his own 
Stratford, with its low wood-and-plaster houses 
and straggling streets, its massive grammar school, 
where, as a boy, he conned his Lilly's Latin gram- 
mar. A little apart, by the glassy Avon, stood 
old Trinity Church, its lofty spire rising above the 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 137 

surrounding elms. There is abundant evidence that 
Shakespeare loved Warwickshire with a depth of 
attachment that nothing could alter. These early- 
surroundings entered into and became a permanent 
part of his life and ge-nius, and his works are full 
of country sights and sounds. He shows us rural 
England in such scenes as that of the sheep-shearing 
in The Winter's Tale; he contrasts the free wood- 
land with the court in As You Like It; he defines 
for us the essence of the ideal shepherd's life,* and 
in many a song, written to be sung in crowded Lon- 
don theaters, his imagination escapes to the fields 
and flowers of his native Warwickshire. 

And Shakespeare's Wanvickshire added to natural 
beauty the charm of local legends and the traditions 
of a splendid past. Within easy reach of Stratford 
lay Warwick, with its fine old castle, once the home 
of the great king- maker of the Wars of the Roses. 
The whole region was bound by tradition and asso- 
ciation to that great civil strife which is one of the 
chief themes of Shakespeare's plays on English his- 
tory. Near by was Kenil worth, the castle of Eliza- 
beth's favorite, the Earl of Leicester, where the 
Queen was received (1575) wdth those magnificent 
revels, at which the boy Shakespeare may have been 
present. Traveling companies of players seem to 
have visited Stratford during Shakespeare's early 
years, whose performances he doubtless witnessed. 
He may even have gazed at the wonders of a Mira- 
cle play at Coventry, a town some twenty miles dis- 

*Liues beginuing,'* To sit upon a hill," 3 Henry VI., act ii 
scene 5. 



138 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

tant, where these plays were frequently produced by 
the Guilds. 

Besides all that he gained from such surroundings 
and experiences, Shakespeare had received some in- 
struction at the town grammar school. 
School. TT- 1 •11 

Here he acquired, or began to acquire, 

what his learned and somewhat pedantic fellow- 
dramatist, Ben Jonson, called his "small Latin and 
less Greek," however much that may have been. In 
1578 John Shakespeare, who had been prosperous 
and respected, began to lose money, and it is gen- 
erally su|)posed that, in consequence, Shakespeare was 
taken from school and put to some employment. 
Yie are left to conjecture concerning these years of 
his life ; but we know that in 1582 he married Ann 
Hathaway, a woman eight years older than himself. 
A few years later, about 1585 to 1587, Shakespeare 
left Stratford and went up to London, as so many 
youthful adventurers are doing and have done, to 
seek his fortune. If we choose to believe a story 
which there seems no sufficient cause for entirely 
disregarding, the immediate reason for this step was 
Shakespeare's quarreling with a neighboring landed 
proprietor. Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote Hall. 
Shakespeare is said to have been brought before this 
gentleman for deer-stealing. " For this," says the 
original authority for the story, " he was prosecuted 
by that gentleman [Lucy], as he thought, somewhat 
too severely ; and, in order to revenge the ill-usage, 
he made a ballad upon him. And though this, 
probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it 
»s said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 139 

the prosecution against him to that degree that he 
was obliged to leave his business and family in War- 
wickshire for some time and shelter himself in Lon- 
don." * This story is probably not without some 
foundation ; but, in any case, Shakespeare's establish- 
ment in London is exactly what his circumstances 
would lead us to expect. In 1585 he had a wife and 
three children to support, his father's money affairs 
had gone from bad to worse, and Shakespeare, strong 
as we may imagine in the hopes and confidence of 
youth and genius, had every reason to feel provincial 
Stratford too cramped for his powers. 

** The spirit of a youth 
That means to be of note, begins betimes." f 

In addition to all this, James and Richard Bur- 
bage, two famous actors in tlie company with which 
Shakespeare became connected, are supposed to have 
been Warwickshire men. If this were the case, 
Shakespeare may have been encouraged by the pros- 
pect of their assistance. 

When Shakespeare reached London (1587?) the 
drama was rapidly gaining in popular favor 3 clever 
young playwrights were giving it form, 
and Marlowe had recently produced his ^^^^^n^^® 
Tamburlaine, We know nothing of 
Shakespeare's life during his first few years in Lon- 
don. It is supposed that he studied French and 
Italian under John Florio, a noted teacher of that 
time. There is a story that he was first employed at 

* Nicholas Rowe, Life of Shakespeare. 
\ Antony and Cleopatra, act iv. scene 4 



140 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

a theater in holding the horses of those who rode to 
the play, and that he had a number of boys to assist 
him. This, however, is generally distrusted. We 
do kTiow that Shakespeare made a place for him- 
self g^mong the crowd of struggling dramatists, arous- 
ing the envy of Greene by his rapid advance in favor; 
and that bj^ 1592 he was established as a successful 
actor and author. In some way he seems to have 
commended himself to the young Earl of South- 
ampton, to whom he dedicated his first poem, the 
Venus and Adonis, in 1593. Shakespeare seems to 
have begun his work as a dramatist by adapting and 
partially rewriting old plays. Titus Andronicus, 
a coarse and brutal tragisdy, was probably one of the 
plays thus touched up by Shakespeare in his'prentice 
period. His arrangement of Henry FT. (Part I.) 
was brought out in 1592, and seems to have done 
much to bi'ing him into notice. Among these earlier 
plays (written before 1598) were The Comedy of 
Errors, in which Shakespeare joins the imitators of 
Plautus ; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's 
Labor''s Lost, into which many characteristic features 
of the Italian comedy were introduced ; and thus 
we see that Shakespeare, like the other dramatists of 
his time, turned at the very outset to classic models 
and contemporary Italy. Professor Dowden points 
out that certain characters and situations in this last- 
mentioned play were used again in a modified form 
in the later Italian study. The Merchant of Venice, 
To an Elizabethan audience there was a glamour in 
these Italian backgrounds, even in the casual men- 
tion of names and places, that came freighted with 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 141 

suggestion. To the Eiiglisliman of Sliakespeare's 
day, the Italy of the Renaissance was a region of 
wonder and inspiration. Its marble palaces, its un- 
matched and curious treasures of art, its learning, 
its luxurious magnificence and pagan refinements of 
pleasure, the warmth of its southern nights, the 
liquid blue of its southern skies, these things intoxi- 
cated the colder and more sober English nature and 
bewildered the English conscience. And this magic 
Sliakespeare felt and helped to make his countrymen 
feel also. 

The poetic fantasy of A Midsummer Nights 
Dream also belongs to this period. But Shakespeare 
also shared in the intense patriotism of the time ; in 
1594 he produced Richard 11.^ and the other plays 
of his great historical series followed in rapid suc- 
cession. At Christmas of this year Shakespeare is 
known to have acted with Burbage and the other 
members of the Lord Chamberlain's company before 
Queen Elizabeth. Everything indicates that, so far 
as his worldly affairs were concerned, Shakespeare 
steadily prospered. In these active and'hard-work- 
ing years he grew in fortune as well as in reputa- 
tion ; he sliowed himself a practical and capable man 
of business as well as a transcendent genius, and by 
his character he won the love and respect of his 
fellows. By 1597 he was able to buy a home for 
himself in his beloved Stratford. In 1599 he was 
one of the proprietors of '^ The Globe Theater," 
built in that year. In 1606 a further purchase of 
107 acres of land at Stratford is made by Wil- 
liam Shakespeare, Gentleman. Thus, while he is 



142 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

adding to the treasures of the world's literature, 
the thoughts and ambitions of this country-bred 
Shakespeare seem to return and center about the 
Stratford of his youth. 

Up to this time, Shakespeare's success had been in 
comedy and in the historical drama. He had, indeed, 
wi'itten .Ro)7ieo aiidtTuliet, ihs^t rapturous and romantic 
tragedy of ill-fated love, and, in scattered passages, 
had given hints of his power to sound the depths of 
yet profounder passion. In 1601 he began, in Julius 
Ccesar, the great series of plays which rank him 
among the supreme tragic poets of the world. In 
play after play he now turns from the humorous and 
gayer side of life to face its most terrible questions, 
to reveal to us the very depths of human weakness, 
agony, and crime. Some think that these great 
tragedies were written out of the suffering and 
bitterness of Shakespeare's own experience, that, 
through the loss or treachery of friends, or some 
other personal sorrow, life at this time grew dark 
und diiEcult for him. Whatever griefs gave him 
this insight, it is certain that he somehow gained 
the knowledge for which even genius must pay the 
price of suffering. Shakespeare exhibits in the plays 
of this period a full understanding of the darkest 
aspects of life. Here is shown us sin, the hideous 
ulcer at the heart of life, poisoning its very source, 
degrading souls, and bringing with it a train of 
miseries which confound alike the innocent and 
the guilty. 

In Macbeth we are present at the ruin of a soul, 
stand^gg '^-^^.solute at the brink of the first crime and 



THIi REVIVAL 01^ LEARNIKG 143 

then hurrying recklessly from guilt to guilt ; in 
Othello we see the helplessness of a '' noble nature " 
in the hands of fiendish ingenuity and malice ; 
Ophelia, the ^' fair rose of May," and Hamlet, per- 
ish with the guilty King and Queen ; the outcast 
Lear, " more sinned against than sinning," and the 
spotless Cordelia fall victims to a monstrous wicked- 
ness : 

"Kot the first 
Who with best meaning hav« incurred the worst." 

To Chaucer's shrewd eye and sunny good humor 
Shakespeare added the sublime depth and earnest- 
ness of a far rarer and Ticher nature. If he was 
tolerant, like Chaucer, it was not because he was 
capable of an easy indifference, or " peyned him not 
eche crokked to fedresse "; it was because, knowing 
the worst of life^ he could yet accept it with cheer- 
fulness and hope For Shakespeare always shows us 
that high endeavors, greatness, and innocence cannot 
really fail qo long as they remain true to themselves, 
because thev are their own exceedinof sfreat reward. 
It is enough that Brutus was '' the noblest Roman of 
them all," though he lie dead for a lost cause under 
the gaze of the conquering Octavius. Worldly suc- 
cess may mean spiritual ruin ; worldly ruin, spiritual 
success. Shakespeare does not explain the dark 
riddle of life ; he does say with unequaled earnest- 
ness : " Woe unto them that call darkness liglit and 
light darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet 
for bitter." 

Shakespear<i is no apologist for error ; in his plays 



144 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

sin is laid bare in all its repulsive baseness and deform- 
ity, a root of bitterness fouling the sweet springs of 
life. The great moral distinctions which — more than 
differences of class, or race, or intellect — separate 
soul from soul, are everywhere sharply and firmly 
drawn. If Richard III., or lago, or the two woman 
fiends in iear, reveal the spirit of wickedness incar- 
nate, in no poet are virtue and holiness more lovely 
and divine. Our conceptions of the worth and dig- 
nity of humanity are raised, our ideals purified and 
ennobled, by the contemplation of the heroic in 
Shakespeare's world. Cordelia, Virgilia, Miranda, 
Portia, elevate and sanctify our thoughts of woman- 
hood by their loveliness and purity; the knightly 
courage of Henry V., the faithfulness of Kent, the 
blunt honesty and loyalty of Faulconbridge, the 
Roman constancy of Horatio, all inspire us with a 
generous admiration for manly virtue. " Shakes- 
peare,"^ saj's Coleridge, " is an author, of all others, 
calculated to make his readers better as well as 
wiser." Yet with all his uncompromising morality, 
his stern condemnation of sin, Shakespeare pours out 
over the faults and frailties of the erring creatures 
he has made, the fullness of a marvelous tenderness 
and pity. The humility of a great nature under 
the sense of its own short-comings, the recognition 
of an ideal of excellence so stainless that all fail alike 
in attaining it, these personal traits, it seems to us, 
shine out through Shakespeare's lessons of forgive- 
ness and of charity. Throughout all of Shakes- 
peare's work, this compassion for human weakness, 
this large-hearted sympathy with human failures and 



THE BEVIYAL OF LEABNlNa 145 

mistakes, sheds a gracious and kindly light, but in 
two plays, Measure for Measure and The Merchant 
of Venice^ the need of mercy is given an especial 
prominence. In the first, Isabella, imploring mercy 
for her condemned brother, exclaims : ^ 

''Alas ! Alas! 
Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once ; 
And BJe that might the vantage best have took 
Found out the remedy. How would you be, 
If He, which is the top of judgment, should 
But judge you as you are ? "* 

And in the same spirit, Portia declares : 

** That in the course of justice none of us 
Should see salvation ; we do pray for mercy. 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy," f 

Thus Shakespeare, hating and condemning sin, 
teaches us that our human weakness requires another 
law than that of rigid justice. Neither in our 
heavenly nor our earthly relations dare we ^^ stand 
upon our bond." Shylock, intrenched in the support 
of a lower and earthly law, fails to see upon what 
compulsion he " must " be merciful. But Shakes- 
peare, through Portia, points to the obligation of 
the higher law ; he tells us that there is something 
not " nominated in the bond," even charity ; the 
grace of a mutual forbearance without which human 
life would be literally unlivable. He enforces in his 
way the parable of the unjust servant, " Shouldest 

* Measure for Measure, act ii. scene 2. 
f Merchant of Venice, act iv. scene 1. 



146 INTBOBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUHE 

not tliou, also, have bad compassion on thy fellow* 
servant, even as I bad pity on thee ^" 

Toward the close of his life, Shakespeare passed in 
his art out of bis tragic mood to write some of the 
loveliest of his comedies, with undiminished fresh- 
ness and creative vigor. The imagination which at 
the beginning of Shakespeare's work budded forth 
in A Midsummer J^ighfs Dream, the fairy-land of 
Oberon and Titania, gives being to the dainty spirit 
Ariel, speeding at the command of Prospero, or 
cradled in the bell of the cowslip ; while in The 
Wiiiter^s Tale^ the stress of tragedy over, we can 
fancy ourselves back again in TTarwickshire with 
Shakespeare, breathing its country odors and gazing 

on the 

"daffodils 

That come before the swallow dares and take 
The winds of March with beauty I " * 

As Shakespeare's fortune and engagements per- 
mitted him, he seems to have spent more and more 
time in his native place ; and he appears 

Retijement ^^ j^^^.^ returned there about 1610 or 
to Stratford. ^^ , ^ . ^ , . , 

1612. He had said his last to the world ; 

for a few silent years that appeal profoundly to our 

imaginative interest, he lived in the midst of the 

scenes and associations of his boyhood, and then, on 

the 23d of April, 1616, the fifty-second anniversaiy, 

it is supposed, of his birth, he closed his eyes on the 

world. 

Shakespeare speaks to all times and nations for the 

English nature and genius. He gathers and sums up 

* Wintefs Tale, act iv. scene 3. 



THE REYIYAL OF LEARNING 147 

the best that has gone before him — the Celtic wit, 
fancy, and deftness ; the Teutonic solidity and sin- 
cerity, its earnestness, morality, and reverence for 
the unseen. To this capacious nature, drawing 
its forces from the genius of two races, awakened 
Italy gives her tribute ; and through it the English 
Renaissance finds its supreme poetic utterance. This 
man, then, stands for the English people, a king over 
them for all time. ''Here, I say," Carlyle writes, ''is 
an English king whom no time or chance, Parliament 
or combination of Parliaments can dethrone ! This 
king, Shakespeare, does he not shine in crowned 
sovereignty over us all as the noblest, gentlest, yet 
strongest of rallying-signs ; indestructible ; really 
more valuable in that point of view than any other 
means or appliance whatsoever? We can fancy him 
as radiant aloft over all the nations of Englishmen a 
thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New 
York, wheresoever, under what sort of parish con- 
stable soever, English men and women are, they will 
say to one another : 'Yes, this Shakespeare is ours ; 
we produced him, we speak and think by him ; we 
are of one blood and kind with him.'"* 

* ** The Hero as Poet," Heroes and Hero Worship, by Thomas 
Carlyle. 



148 INTRODrCTION TO ENGLISH LITEKATURE 



TABLE OF SHAKESPEARE S WORKS 



{F. J. Fu 

I. PRE-SKAKESPEAHEAX 
GROUP. 

ToucfL^d by Shakespeare. 
Tims Andronicus (1588-90). 

1 Henry YL (1590-91). 

n. EAELT COAIEDEES. 

Love's Labor's Lost (1590). 
Comedy of Errors (1591). 
Two Gentlemen of Verona 

(1592-931 
Midsummer Xigbt's Dream 

(1593-94). 

m. MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE 
GROUP. 

Early History. 

2 and 3 Henry VI. (1591-92). 
Richard IH. (1593). 

IT. EARLY TRAGEDY. 

Romeo and Juliet (? two dates, 
1591, 1596-97). 

T. MEDDLE HISTORY. 

Richard II. (1594). 
King John (1595). 

TI. MEDDLE CO^IEDY. 

Merchant of Venice (1596). 

Vn. LATER HISTORY. 

History and Comedy vnited. 
1 and 2 Henry IV. (;i59:-9S.). 
Henry V. (1599). 

vin. LATER co:medy. 

(a) Rough and Boisterous 

Comedy, 

Taming of the Shrew (? 1597). 

Merry Wives (? 1598). 



rrdvaXt) 

(b) Joyous, Be fined, Bomiantic, 
Much Ado About Xothins 

(1598). 
As You Like It (1599). 
Twelfth Xight (1600-1601). 

(c) Serious, Dark, Ironical. 

All's Well (? 1601-1602). 
Measure for Measure (1603\ 
Troilus and Cressida (? 1603 
revised 1607 ?). 

IX. :MIDDLE TRAGEDY. 

Julius Caesar (1601). 
Hamlet (1602). 

X. LATER TRAGEDY. 

Othello (1604). 

Lear (1605). 

Macbeth (1606). 

Antony and Cleopatra (1607). 

Coriolanus (1608). 

Tlmon (1607-1608). 

XI. ROMANCES. 

Pericles (1608). 
Cymbeline (1609). 
Tempest (1610). 
Winter's Tale (1610-11)). 

Xn. FRAGMEXTS. 

Two Xoble Kinsmen (1612) 
Henry VHI. (1612-13). 

Boems. 
Yenus and Adonis (? 1592) 
Lucrece (1593-94). 
Sonnets (? 1595-1605). 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 149 

STUDY LIST 
SHAKESPEARE 

1. Editions. There are many admirable editions of Shakes- 
peare adapted to school use. Among tiiese may be mentioned 
those of William J. Rolfe, of Rev. Henry N. Hudson, of 
William Aldis Wright, the Temple Shakespeare of Israel 
Golancz and the Eversley Shakespeare of C. H. Herf ord. The 
** Cambridge " (unexpurgated) is a standard edition. 

For advanced work the "Variorum" edition of Horace 
Howard Furness will be found invaluable. This edition in- 
cludes (1902) the following: Hamlet (2 vols.), Romeo and Juliet^ 
Macbeth, Lear, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, As Tou Like 
It, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Much Ado About Nothing, 
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Ticelfth Night. 

2. Grammars, Lexicons, Biography, Criticisms, etc. 
The main object of the student who approaches the works of 
Shakespeare primarily as literature is to cultivate his powers 
of appreciation and enjoyment. His first aim is to enter imagi- 
natively into the greatest poetry of the world; this aim should 
never be obscured by using the plays as mere material for the 
study of language or grammar, or by laying undue stress on 
"doubtful passages" or worrying over them as so many 
verbal puzzles. On the otiier hand, our enjoyment of Shakes- 
peare rests largely on a solid basis of understanding; appre- 
ciation often depends upon the thoroughness of our study, tor 
as there are many things in reading Shakespeare that we must 
feel, there are also many things that we must knoic. We must, 
therefore, know something of Shakespeare's grammar, his use 
of words, his local or contemporary allusions; thoroughness 
and minuteness cannot be too strongly insisted on, provided, 
that they are made a means, and not an end. For this 
purpose the following will be found of the greatest value: 
Abbott's Shakesperian Grammar (Macmillan); Schmidt's 
Shakespeare Lexicon, Berlin; Craik's English of Shakespeare, 
edited by W. J. Rolfe; Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Concordance to 
Shakespeare; Mrs. H. H. Furness' Concordance to Poems. 



150 TNTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

In biography, criticism, etc., the following will be found 
helpful for general use: Dowden's Shakespeare Primer; Dow- 
den's Shakespeare, His Mind and Art; Dowden's Introduction 
to Shakespeare; Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare (also in 
abridged edition for students), Brandes' William Shakespeare, 
Elze's Illustrated Life of Shakespeare, Knight's Life of Shakes- 
peare, J. O. Halliwell-Phillips' Life of Shakespeare, F. G. 
Fleay's Chronicle History of the Life and Works of William 
Shakespeare. Baynes' article on ' ' Shakespeare " in Encyclo- 
pcedia Britannica is valuable for stud}^ of early environ- 
ment. Hudson's Shakespeare, His Life, Art, and Character 
Hunter's Filustrations of the Life and Studies of Shakespeare, 
Gervinus' Shakespeare Commentaries, Lov/ell's essay in My 
Study Windows, R. G. Moulton's Shakespeare as a Dramatic 
Artist. 

General Notes and Refekences. Pollard's English 
Miracle Plays, Keltic's British Dramatists, Symonds' Shakes- 
peare's Predecessors in the English Drama, Church's Life of 
Bacon, essay on '* Marlowe " in Henry Kingsley's Fireside 
Studies, Elizabethan Songs, A. H. Bullen's England*s Helicon, 
Lyrics from the Dramatists of the Elizabethan Age, Bell's Songs 
from the* Dramatists, Thayer's Six Best English Plays, 
Katherine Lee Bates' English Religious Drama, Shakespeare's 
Plutarch (Skeat's edition), Shakespeare's Holinshead (Bos- 
well-Stone's edition). 

3. General Suggestions for Study, a. All criticisms, 
commentaries, notes, and the like, should be made strictly 
subordinate to the careful and independent study of the play 
itself. An intimate acquaintance with the play through care- 
ful and repeated reading is the first great essential, and the 
student will find it both more profitable and more interesting 
to be as far as possible his own critic and commentator, before 
resorting to the work of others. He should try to do 
his own thinking, rather than rely entirely on others to do it 
for him. 

h. When the play has been carefully read, the sources of the 
plot may be taken up, and the raw material with which 
Shakespeare worked compared with the finished shape given 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 161 

to it by bis art. Thus the Roman plays should be compared 
with North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, which Shakes- 
peare followed with unusual closeness ; the English historical 
plays should send the student to the '* Chronicles'' on which 
Shakespeare relied, etc. 

c. The date, or probable date, of the composition of the 
play must be noted, and its precise chronological pl2t« in 
Shakespeare's work carefully studied. (For this v. Table of 
Shakespeare's TVorks, p. 148, or that in Dowden's Shakespeare 
Primer. This raises the question of its possible or probable 
connection with the plays immediately before or after it in 
order of composition. 

d. The student is now in a position to define his opinion of 
the chief characters of the play. In doing this he should take 
into account the manners and customs of the time in which 
they lived, and the especial circumstances in which they are 
placed. It is helpful to detach everything spoken throughout 
the play by the particular character under consideration, and 
consider it separately. Character contrast. The way in 
which any of the characters are contrasted should also be 
studied, and the bearing of this character-contrast on the gen- 
eral idea or purpose of the play, considered. The characters 
may be similarly contrasted or compared with those in the 
other plays. 

e. The construction of the play, the development of the plot, 
must be examined ; also the use of the dramatic background, 
t. e.y all the natural surroundings and accessories which help 
to heighten the tone or general effect of the work as a 
whole. 

/. It remains for the student to sum up all he has gained, 
and endeavor to grasp the main idea, or underlying motive, 
which contributes to the artistic unity of the whole. 

4. Study of Special Plays. The following plays are 
suggested as especially suitable for school use : Julius Ccesar, 
Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Kight, Mid- 
summer Nigh f s Dream. 

For somewhat advanced classes : Hamlet, Macbeth, Bichard 
IL, Henry F., The Tempest. 



152 INTBODUCTION TO ENGI/ISH LITERATURE 

Study of Macbeth for advanced class, according to the general 
plan above suggested. 

(1) Read carefully in one of the editions given above. 

(2) Sources of the plot. See Holinshed's Chronicle^ ' ' Variorum" 
edition of H. H. Furness, and Dowden's Shakespeare Primer, 
History of the Period, Holinshed, etc. 

What was the social condition of Scotland at this time ? and 
how did its civilization compare with other countries ? Was 
the time in which Macbeth lived an age of superstition, and 
was Scotland a particularly superstitious country ? What 
was the law as to witchcraft, and the popular belief, in 
Shakespeare's time ? (See Scott's Witchcraft and Demonology.) 

(3) When was Macbeth written ? To which period does it 
then belong ? 

(4) Characters of Macbeth and of Lady Macbeth, Give an 
opinion of the character of Macbeth ; how much do you con- 
sider he was influenced by the witches' prophecies ? Do you 
think he had any idea of the King's murder in his mind before 
his meeting with the witches ? If so, what is there in the 
play that suggests such a possibility ? What is the effect of 
Lady Macbeth on her husband ? Why does Macbeth hesitate 
to murder Duncan ? Is the wickedness of the action the 
strongest argument against it in Macbeth's mind ? What is 
the effect on Macbeth's character of yielding to this tempta- 
tion ? does he show any remorse ? Show some point in which 
the character of Macbeth presents a contrast to that of Banquc. 
What do you think of Lady Macbeth ? How does she com- 
pare with Macbeth? Which had the greater courage? Which 
do you think had the more highly organized nature ? How 
does the character of Lady Macbeth compare with Goneril 
and Regan in King Lear, and why should the former be 
a more interesting study, and call forth more discussion than 
the two latter ? Contrast the characters of Macbeth and 
Hamlet. 

(5) Construction and development of plot. Note that Macbeth 
Is a striking instance of dramatic unity. One source of unity 
to be found in the rapid and logical development of plot. We 
find great quickness of action, incident follows incident, crime 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 153 

succeeds to crime, with a velocity which in itself helps to give 
unity of tone. 

a. State the extent of time covered by the whole play. 

h. Show how quickly the witches' prophecies were fulfilled. 

Find up to what point in the play Macbeth appears success- 
ful. Then note his series of failures. Show how the dra- 
matic background is suited to the plot. Compare the use of 
natural surroundings in this and other plays. In what other 
tragedy does a storm add to the effect ? What kind of play 
should we expect from the background of the opening scene ? 
What natural features besides the storm are in harmony with 
all that follows ? Show how Shakespeare has selected night 
instead of day for a great part of the main action. 

Collect and compare frequent allusions to darkness and to 
sleep found throughout the play. 

How are the witches in keeping with the tone of the play ? 
What was the belief concerning witches in Macbeth's time ? 
How do they suggest the Three Fates ? Who was Hecate ? 
Note Shakespeare's use of the supernatural in this and other 
plays : The fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream; Caliban 
and Ariel in The Tempest; also the ghosts that appear to 
murderers, as Julius Caesar, Richard III., Banquo. 

(6) Idea or motim of play. The student should by this time 
have arrived at some idea concerning the underlying motive of 
the play. He may now safely test this by comparing his own 
judgment with the views of the commentators. For reference 
^. Biography and Criticism, § ii. supra. 

Suggestions for Study of Julius CcBsar, a. General scope 
and story of the play; sources of the plot; date; place in 
order of plays ; relation to other plays. 

h. The characters : 

CcBsar. How does Shakespeare here present him ? How 
does Shakespeare speak of him in other plays ? Why is he 
subordinated in this play ? We can conceive of a drama built 
up around Caesar as its central figure, which should lead up to 
his death as its final catastrophe, and in which all our sympa- 
thies should be enlisted on his side. Why does not Shakes- 
peare adopt this method ? Here Caesar drops out early in the 



154 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

action. What, then, gives the play its unity ; or is it defective 
in unity ? 

Brutus. Analyze his character. Do you agree with the 
eulogy pronounced over his dead body ? Is he more or less 
important than Caesar in the action ? If more, explain why. 

Cassius. His character. Contrast it with that of Brutus. 
How is his superiority to Brutus as a practical man of affairs 
shown in the play ? 

Contrast Brutus and Caesar ; Cassius and Caesar. "What is 
the immediate cause of Caesar's fall ? Contrast this with cause 
of the failure of Brutus. Cite other Shakespearian characters 
whose fall is attributable to causes similar to those which 
ruined Caesar or Brutus. Discuss other instances of success 
and failure in Shakespeare. 

c. Unity of action. From what is it derived ? Point out the 
unity of action and its cause in George Eliot's Middlemarch, 
in Hawthorne's Marble Faun, and in Tennyson's Idylls of the 
King. On what does it depend in Julius CcBsar f 

General thoughts on the play. Can any more general reason 
be given for the failure of Brutus than the one assigned ? 
What does Shakespeare tell us Brutus and Cassius really fight 
against ? 

d» Further points to he considered. Study may also be made 
of Shakespeare's treatment of the mob. Cf., on this point, 
CoriolanuSy Henry VI. y etc. 

FRANCIS BACON 

The greatest names in Elizabethan literature are 
those of the dramatists and the poets, yet the intel- 
lectual advance of the time showed 
Elizabethan .^.^i . -^irii ^ n 

prose. itself, also, m a rapid development of 

prose. English prose had made but 
little progress between the time of Wyclif and the 
middle of the sixteenth century. Such works as 
Malory's Jfor?^6 c?'^r^At^r (1485), More's History oj 
Richard II L (written 1513), and Tyudale's Trans* 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 155 

latio7i of the Bible (1525), shov/ prose struggling 
toward a more honorable place ; but it is not until 
the early years of the reign* of Elizabeth, when life 
and thought were expanding on every side, that the 
art of English prose-writing may be said to fairly 
begin. The effect of the Renaissance may be seen 
in the learned prose of Ascham (1515-1568), and in 
the enphuistic intricacies of John Lyly (1553-1606). 
Literary criticism springs into life in such works as 
Sidney's Defense of Poesy (1580-1581), or Putten- 
ham's Art of English Poesy (1589). Prose fiction 
is represented by Sidney's elaborate romance, the 
Arcadia (1590), and by countless shorter stories 
from the rapid pens of Peele, Greene, and other 
struggling dramatists. Besides all this we have, in 
the reigns of Elizabeth and James, an abundant prose 
literature of history and travel, and innumerable 
pamphlets on the questions of the day. In theology, 
Richard Hooker published The Laws of Ecclesiastical 
Polity (first four books, 1594) ; a great work, whicli 
has been called " the first monument of splendid 
literary prose that we possess."* This growth of 
English prose, in many directions, can only be hinted 
at, nor can we stop to consider Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, 
or Sir Thomas Browne, writers Avho occupy a high 
place in the literature of the early seventeenth cen- 
tury, by their quaintness or majesty of style. Out 
of this wide range we will select one writer, Francis 
Bacon, for a somewhat more extended study. 

Francis Bacon was born in London, January 22, 
1561. His father was Sir Nicliolas Bacon, Lord 
* English Literature Primer, S. Brooke, p. 79. 



156 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Keeper of the Great Seal, and one of the most 

trusted of the early statesmen of Elizabeth ; a yet 

more famous statesman, Lord Burleiorh, 

Bacon's life. , . , , . ^ ° . ' 

was his uncle by marriage. From his 

earliest years, Bacon was thus connected with the 
court and with public life. When he was eighteen, 
his prospects were greatly changed by the sudden 
death of his father. Bacon, who was the younger 
son, was thus left insufficiently provided for, and was 
compelled to make his own w?^ in the world. He 
accordingly entered upon the study of the law, and 
although Lord Burleigh showed no disposition to 
assist him, his advance was exceedingly rapid. He 
was made a barrister in 1582, Solicitor General in 
1607, Attorney General in 1613, and Lord Chancellor 
in 1617. From this brilliant public success we get 
no idea of Bacon's inner life and deepest aspirations. 
He declared, in a letter to Lord Burleigh, written at 
the outset* of his career, " I confess that I have as 
vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil 
ends ; for I have taken all knowledge to be my prov- 
ince." He early resolved that he would strive to 
benefit the race by the discovery of truth ; and, 
although he seems at times to have been diverted by 
worldly necessities or worldly ambitions, he was 
always true at heart to his lofty purpose. From his 
inability to reconcile contending interests — the love 
of place and power, with the unselfish devotion to 
knowledge — springs the tragedy of Bacon's life. In 
1621 Bacon's worldly ambitions were overthrown at 
a stroke. He was accused of having taken bribes in 
his office of Lord Chancellor. He piteously confessed 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 157 

the charge, and was henceforth a ruined man in 
reputation and in fortune. Bacon spent the remainder 
of his life in the composition of some of the great 
philosophical and scientific works on which his fame 
chiefly rests. With Bacon, the philosopher and 
scientist, however, the student of English literature 
is not directly concerned. The story of his closing 
years is very pitiable. "The Lord Chancellor," said 
his former patron, the young favorite, Buckingham, 
" the Lord Chancellor is so sick that he cannot live 
long." He still showed a brave front to the world, 
and moved about with a courtly retinue, like the 
shadow of his former self, so that Prince Charles 
said of him : " This man scorns to go out in a snuff ; " 
but, for all this, the wound was deep, and bled 
inwardly. He caught cold from exposure, while 
engaged in a scientific experiment, and died a few 
days later, April 9, 1626. 

Bacon is generally considered the greatest man of 
the Elizabethan age, with the single and inevitable 
exception of Shakespeare. Dean Church calls him 
" the brightest, richest, largest mind but one, in the 
age which had seen Shakespeare and his fellows." 
Yet, speaking strictly, Bacon holds a place in English 
literature almost by accident, and in spite of him- 
self. He deliberately chose to be a Latin rather than 
an English writer, having no confidence in the sta- 
bility of his own language, and believing that it 
would " at one time or another play the bank-rowte 
[bankrupt] with books." He even went so far as to 
have his Advancement of Learning translated from 
English into Latin, so convinced was he of the superi- 



158 INTBOBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUKE 

ority of the latter tongue. This book in its original 
form, the Essays, The History of Henry VIL^ 
and a fragment. The N'eio Atlantis, are substantially 
all that English prose can claim out of the great 
mass of Bacon's writings. 

Yet, while Bacon thought little of his work as an 
English writer, and threw the weight of his immense 
energy in other directions, it is his English works 
that have best held their own. In Raleigh's prose 
we encounter more impassioned and noble eloquence, 
as in those rare places in the History of the World, 
where he seems to suddenly leave the ground and 
soar in the celestial spaces ; but Bacon's style has 
a more even excellence. Incidental and slight as 
Bacon's connection was with the literature of his 
own language, a high critical authority has recently 
pronounced him " one of the greatest writers of 
English prose before the accession of Charles I."* 

Incredit)le as it would have seemed to Bacon, it is 

by the Essays that he is best known t^ the general 

. _ reader. By an " essay," Bacon meant 

His Essays. , ^ . , . , . ^ , . 

the iirst trial, or weighmg, oi a subject, 

as distinguished from a finished treatise. f His 

Essays are pithy jottings on great subjects, informally 

set down, with no attempt to carry the thought 

to its full or natural conclusion. They read like 

the notebook of a profound thinker, a shrewd 

observer of life, a politic and active man of affairs. 

They are brief, suggestive, without an ornament, but 

* Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature, p. 209. 
fjE^S5ay= assays a test, or examination of metals, O. Fc, 
assai ; Lat., exagium. See Skeat's Etymological Dictionary, 



THE BEYIYAL OF LJiAHNING 159 

closely packed with thought. They give us the con- 
centrated results of Bacon's experience, and are often 
comparable to the proverbial sayings in which wise 
men have delighted since the days of Solomon. 
Often they go to the heart of the matter with one 
quick thrust, as in the famous sentence : " Prosperity 
is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the 
blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater 
benediction and the clearer revelation of God's 
favor." * 

Bacon's own account of the object of the Essays is 
that he " endeavored to make them not vulgar, but of 
a nature whereof mucli should be found in experience 
aiid little in books ; so that they should be neither 
repetitions nor fancies "; and he desires that they 
should " come home to men's business and bosoms." 

Three editions of the Essays were published in 
Bacon's lifetime ; the first in 1597, the second in 
1612, and the third in 1625. The first edition con- 
tained only ten essaj^«^, but by the third edition the 
number had been increased to fifty-eight. 

We are apt to undervalue these essays on the first 
reading, and it is only through long familiarity that 
their wisdom and depth really reveal tliemselves. 
Some of them, such as the essay " Of Great Place," 
exhibit the high purposes of Bacon in strange and 
melancholy contrast to his actual performance. His 
life was a tragic contradiction, and in such declara- 
tions we ought not to believe him deliberately 
insincere. In thinking of his shortcomings we 
should remember, also, the nobility of his ideals, 
* Essay on *' Adversity." 



160 llsrrRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

*'If ever a man," says Dean Church, ^' had a great 
object in life and pursued it through good and evil 
report, through ardent hope and keen disappoint- 
ment to the end, with unwearied patience and 
unshaken faith, it was Bacon, when he sought for the 
improvement of human knowledge, for the glory of 
God and the relief of man's estate." * 

SUMMARY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 

We have seen England, lifted by the common 
wave of thought and emotion, find an outlet for her 
richer and deeper experience in the creation of 
' innumerable works in every department of literature. 
To the careful student of history, the vast possibilities, 
the latent powers of the English nature are apparent 
from the first ; the genius of Chaucer strengthens 
his confidence in the correctness of his estimate, and 
he see^ in the supreme literary greatness of England, 
under the kindly influence of the Renaissance, the 
splendid confirmation of this view. 

AYe have approached this many-sided and inex- 
haustible period, chiefly through the study of three 
of its greatest men, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon. 
The first is supreme as a poet of dream-land, the 
second supreme among all poets, the last is the great 
thinker who stands at the gateway of oiir modern 
science. These men are indeed pre-eminent, but 
other writers crowd about them, each great enough to 
stand first in a less abundant time. The extent and 
richness of Elizabethan literature has made our study 

* Church's Life of Bacon, 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 161 

most limited, for so " spacious " is the time that ou 
every hand are beautiful regions which we cannot 
even pretend to explore. For instance there is al( 
the literature of criticism, the books in whicli Sir 
Philip Sidney, William Webbe, and George Putten. 
ham discuss the art of poetry ; there is the literature/ 
of travel, books such as Hakluyt's Voyages (1589), in 
which the narratives of great navigators like Sii* 
Humphrey Gilbert or Sir Walter Raleigh were 
collected ; there are all the books of short poems, 
TottePs Miscellany, England^s Helicon^ The Para- 
dise of Dainty Devices, and the like, which tell us 
how prodigal the country was in song in that full 
time when England was '' a nest of singing birds.'' 
Then, too, there are series of sonnets, such as those 
of Spenser, Sidney, William Drummond (1585-1649) ; 
the last perhaps the most Italian in tone and among 
the most beautiful of them all. We have spoken 
briefly of the drama, but only extended study can 
make us realize its power and richness, the great 
host of busy playwrights and their extraordinary 
vigor and productiveness. We have alluded to the 
prose writers, but we must pass by the work of 
historian, theologian, romance-writer, and antiquarian, 
almost without mention. We are forced to leave 
these regions behind us unexplored, but it will help 
us to a firmer hold on this revival of learning period, 
if, before leaving it, we fix in our minds certain points 
of chronology that rise like milestones along the 
way. In doing this we must remember that such 
arbitrary divisions of literature are convenient, but 
not always exactly true, for literary periods are not 



162 IKTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATURE 

in reality thus sharply defined, but one flows almost 
imperceptibly into the other. 

First [cir, 1491-c^>. 1513). We may associate 
the last ten years of the fifteenth and the first ten or 
thirteen years of the sixteenth centuries with that 
band of teachers and educational reformers who 
may be called the missionaries of the new learning. 
This period reaches from about 1491, the year when 
Grocyn lectured on Greek at Oxford, to about 1510 
or 1513, when Colet founded or completed the gram- 
mar school of St. Paul. Conspicuous in this time are 
Grocyn, Erasmus, Linacre, Colet, and, in his young 
manhood, Sir Thomas More. 

Second (1513-155 7). During this time the influ- 
ence of Italy begins to be apparent in English 
poetry, Henry YIII. is a patron of learning ; More 
publishes his Utopia^ Heywood his Interludes^ Roger 
Ascham his Toxopliilus (1544), Coverdale and Cran- 
mer their Translations of the Bible (1535 and 1537). 
Phaer's Virgil^ Hey wood's Seneca, and other transla- 
tions of the classics appear. We note in Rcdph 
Roister Doister the beoiiming" of reo'ular comedy. 
On the whole the new learning is making itself ap- 
parent in literature, and the time is full of the signs 
of promise. 

Third (1557-1579). This period may be remem- 
bered as beginning with the publication of Tottel's 
Miscellany and ending with that of Spenser's Shep- 
herd''s Calendar, During this interval the coming 
of a mighty outburst draws nearer, the work of 
preparation goes on in the publication of numerous 
classical translations : Sackville writes his Indue- 



THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 163 

tion to the Mirror for Magistrates (1563); short poems 
and ballads appear in extraordinary numbers ; the 
first regular tragedy is written, and innumerable 
Italian stories become popular. It is a time of 
growth, of preparation, and of expectancy. 

Fourth (1579-1637). Between these years is the 
high noon of the English Renaissance. The period 
begins with the ShephercTs Calendar^ the decisive 
entrance into literature of the greatest poet England 
had produced since Chaucer. The ten years succeed- 
ing are marked by the rapid advance of the drama 
under Lyly, Peele, Greene, Lodge, and Marlowe, the 
immediate precursors of Shakespeare. In 1590, with 
the first installment of The Faerie Queene and the 
advent of Shakespeare, we are at the opening of 
twenty of the most glorious years in the whole 
twelve centuries of the literature. From about 1613, 
when Shakespeare ceased to write, we note the slow 
decline of this creative energj^, and in 1637 two 
events occur which emphasize for us the ending of 
the old and the beginning of the new. In that year 
Ben Jonson died, the greatest surviving representa- 
tive of the glory of the Elizabethans, and in that 
year also there was published the Comics of the 
young Puritan, John Milton. Thus the old order 
was changing, yielding place to the new. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PUEITAN IN LITEMTUEE 
THE EXGLAXD OF MILTON 

Although Shakespeare and Milton are familiarly 
linked together in our ordinary speech as the two 
Shakespeare gi'eatest poets of England, in the whole 
and Milton spirit and nature of their work they 
express the , i ;n ^i • • t^ • 

sp&itof dif- ^^^^^ nardly anything m common, it is 

ferent times, not merely that they are, for the most 
part, distinguished in separate provinces of poetry ; 
that Shakespeare is above all the dramatic, and Mil- 
ton the epic poet of the literature ; the difference 
lies much deeper, and declares itself unmistakably at 
almost eVery point. Now, this is not entirely due to 
an inborn, personal difference in the genius of these 
two representative poets ; it is due also to the differ- 
ence in the spirit of the times they represent. For 
in a sense even Shakespeare was " of an age," as well 
as '^ for all time." * So far as we can guess from his 
work, he seems to have shared the orthodox politics 
of the Tudor times, distrusting the actions of the 
populace, and stanch in his support of the power 
of the king. In the true spirit of the Renaissance, 
Shakespeare's work is taken up chiefly with humanity 

* "He was not of an age, but for all time." From 'Beu 
Joiispij's poem "TQthe Memory of Shakespeare;" 

m ' 



THE PUBITAN IN LITERATURE 165 

in this world, rather than with its relations to any- 
other ; his dramas are alive with the crowding inter- 
ests and activities which came with the Revival of 
Learning. But the England in which Milton lived 
and worked was stirred by far different emotions ; 
its finest spirits were inspired by far different ideals. 
Milton interprets and expresses the England of Puri- 
tanism, as Shakespeare does the England of Eliza- 
beth, and to understand the difference in the spirit of 
their poetry, we must turn to history and grasp the 
broad distinction between the times they respectively 
represent. 

At first sight the change from the England of 
Shakespeare to that of Milton seems an abrupt one. 
In point of actual time the two poets are Elizabethan 
close together, for at the death of Shakes- and Puritan 
peare Milton was eight years old. But ^^g^^^^- 
little more than half a century lies between that 
England in which loyalty to queen and country so 
triumphed over religious differences that Romanist 
and Protestant fought the Armada side by side, and 
that England which hurried Charles I. to the scaffold, 
or in which Cromwell declared : ^' If I met the king 
in battle I would shoot him as soon as any other 
man." Yet in reality this change of the nation's 
piood was not hasty or unaccountable, but the natural 
result of a long and steady development. 

We spoke of the Renaissance as the re-birth of 
the religious as well as of the intellectual life of 
Europe, an4 W^ saw that while in Jtaly the new life 
of the mind took form in wb^t we p^ll the Reyiyal 
of Jjearning^ ill Gernxany ^-he new life of the gpiril 



166 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

had its outcome in that religious awakening we call 
the Reformation. If in Italy the Renaissance meant 
freedom of thought, in Germany it meant freedom 
of conscience. The Revival of Learning and the 
Reformation entered into England almost side by 
side. If the enthusiasm for the new learning, the 
color of luxury, and the '^ enchantments of the 
Circes," had entered England from Italy, something 
also of the awakening of conscience and the protest 
against Romanism had come from Germany, to find 
a deep response in the kindred spirit of Teutonic 
England. 

In our study of the Elizabethan period we have fol- 
lowed the first of these two influences. Let us look 

«,, ^ „ a moment at the second. Almost from 

The Reforma- . ^ . . . . . 

tioninEng- the first, tlie tone of the new learning 

land. [yi Enoiand had been colored bv the 

inherently religious temper of the English character. 
The knowledge of Greek which John Colet gained in 
semi-pagan Italy he applied to the study of the Xew 
Testament. Educational reformer as he was, he had 
the image of the child Christ placed over the head- 
master's desk in St. Paul's Grammar School, with the 
inscrijotion, ^'Hear ye Him.^ Just as the introduc- 
tion of the study of Greek at Oxford changed the 
horizon of the English mind, so the introduction of 
Tyndale's translation of the Bible was an incalculable 
spiritual force. '' K God spare my life," Tyndale had 
said to a learned opponent, " ere many years I will 
cause that the boy that driveth the plow shall know 

*ror account of Colet, read Green's History of the English 
People, YoL 11= p. 79, etc. 



THE PURITAN IN LITERATURE 167 

more of the Scriptures than tliou dost." And year 
after year the inestimable influence of an ever-widen- 
ing knowledge of the Bible was at work in thousands 
of English households. 

Beginning among the upper stratum of society, the 
new learning had worked downward until it touched 
the people. But the changes wrought 
by direct contact with the English Bible, BJ'b^le^''^^^^ 
if slower, were even more vital and more 
extended. The Bible became the literature of the 
people, telling the poorest and plainest of the essen- 
tial things of life in words which all could under- 
stand. If we find a typical picture in the crowd of 
London shopkeepers and prentices crowding the pit 
of the " Fortune " or the '' Globe," we find one no less 
typical in the eager throngs gathered about the reader 
of the Bible in the nave of St. Paul's. '' The disclosure 
of the stores of Greek literature had wrought the revo- 
lution of the Renaissance. The disclosure of the 
older mass of Hebrew literature wrought the revolu- 
tion of the Reformation." * 

With tliis new idea of religious libertj^, the idea of 
political liberty became closely associated. Stimu- 
lated and emancipated by greater intel- Religious 

lectual and relis^ious freedom of inquiry, ^^^ politi- 
"^ . . -, -,. ^ /' cal liberty 

men began to scrutinize and discuss tlie closely con- 
whole theory of government. They nected. 
grew restless under the arbitrary rule of the early 
Stuarts as their minds rose to the conception of their 
supreme obligation to a higher law ; to a Power 

♦Green's Hietoi^y of the English People, vol. iii. p. 11. The 
"whole passage from pp. 9 to 13 may be read in class. 



168 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATURE 

above the will of the king in the state, above the 
will of man in the kingdom of God. In the early 
part of the seventeenth century many things com- 
bined to call out and develop these new feelings. 
The middle classes had advanced greatly during 
Elizabeth's reign, in prosperity, influence, and intel- 
ligence ; the danger from Spain was at an end, and 
men were free to give themselves up to matters at 
home. But the natural grovrth of the nation toward 
a greater political and religious freedom was met by 
petulant opposition. Elizabeth had been wise enough 
to know when and how to yield to the will of her 
Parliament and people, but it was characteristic of 
. , . the Stuarts to take a wrong position and 

rule of the hold to it with an obstinate and reckless 
early Stuarts, tenacity. The unkiugly James (1603- 
1625) flaunted what he considered the ^' Divine 
Right "^ of his kingship in the face of an exasperated 
England. In the early years of the following reign 
(Charles I., 1625-1649), the growing Puritan senti- 
ment was outraged by brutal persecution, the rising 
spirit of liberty insulted by flagrant violations of the 
long established and sacred political rights of Eng- 
lishmen. Thus the England that rose up in protest 
against the severities of Archbishop Laud and the 
tyranny and duplicity of Charles, was on fire with 
other interests and other aspirations than that of 
Elizabeth ; its energies were centered upon two 
great issues — politics and religion. In the one, it 
was determined to 'Syndicate its ancient liberties"; 
in the other, it " reasoned of righteousness and judg- 
Hient to cgme^" Among its great lead,ers in politic§ 



THE PURITAN IN LITERATURE 169 

were Eliot, Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell ; in litera- 
ture it spoke in the strong, simple, biblical prose of 
John Bunyan, a poor tinker; its poet was John Milton. 

LATER ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 

But while the new ways of looking at the deepest 
questions of life, which for years had been agitating 
the Puritan element in England, were thus coming to 
the surface in history and in literature, during the 
early part of the seventeenth century many continued 
to write in the general manner and spirit of the 
Elizabethans. This later Elizabethan literature lies 
outside our present plan of study, but it cannot be 
passed over without a few words. 

The group of dramatists immediately preceding 
Shakespeare (see p. 129) had been followed by a num- 
ber of men of genius who had the 
advantage of writing at a time when fethanSal 
the theater was a more recognized 
institution, and the general form of the drama had 
been fixed by successful experiment. Ben Jonson, 
whose first play. Every Man in his Humor, was 
brought out about 1596-1598, is usually considered 
as the greatest of Shakespeare's fellow-playwrights ; 
he doggedly fought his way to the front in the face 
of many obstacles, wrote many plays and masks, and 
after Shakespeare's death became the most prominent 
man of letters in England. Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Massinger, Ford, Chapman, Dekker, and Marston 
are a few of the most famous of these dramatists, and 
we see the influence of Italy in such plays as Web- 
ster's J)mhejs of Malji^ and Yittoria Cgro7nbonq, qj 



170 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in the intense and passionate tragedies of Cyril 
Tourneur. Nevertheless, the decline of the Eliza- 
bethan drama had begun before Shakespeare's death. 
g J Unlike Shakespeare, Ben Jonson was 

and decline not content to " hold, as 'twere, the 
of drama. mirror up to nature," * and show the 
world of men and women as it actually existed : he 
thought that the poet's business was to point a moral 
and to reform society. He ridiculed the abuses and 
fashionable follies of the time by making the persons 
of his dramas represent the peculiar hobbies or 
" humors " of men, but in doing this his drama lost in 
faithfulness to life through a method which inclined 
him to make the mere caricature of what we call a 
" fad" take the place of a character. The method of 
Jonson, great as he was, was thus a distinct falling 
off from that of Shakespeare. 

Apart from this, the decline of the drama is closely 
associated with the increase of the Puritans, among 
P 't h - whom were its bitterest opponents. In 
tilitytotlie the early seventeenth century this hos- 
stage. tility to the stage increased ; unsuccess- 

ful attempts were made (1619-1631-1633) to suppress 
Blackfriars Theater, and the representation of plays 
on Sunday was prohibited. Many of the more 
respectable people stayed away from the theaters 
altogether, while those who came demanded plays of 
a more and more depraved character. Finally, about 
the beginning of the Civil War (1642) the theaters 
were closed altogether, and the drama almost ceased 
until the Restoration (1660). 

^ Hamlet, act iii. scene 2. 



THE PURITAN IN LITERATURE 171 

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LYRISTS 

Most of the poetry of the early seventeenth cen- 
tury follows the general lines laid down by the Eliz- 
abethans, but with an obvious loss of creative power, 
and with less freshness, vigor, and depth. The first 
enthusiasm awakened by the coming of the new 
learning was largely spent, and men's energies were 
beginning to go out in new directions. Deprived of 
the strong inner impulse which sustained the earlier 
writers, poetry became more light, trifling, and 
affected. Dr. John Donne (IdYS-IGSI), a learned 
man and a genuine poet, delighted in a style of poetry 
often so far-fetched and fantastic as to deprive it of 
much of its value in the eyes of later readers, and 
there arose a group of graceful if somcAvhat artificial 
lyric poets who contented themselves with writing 
slight and pretty songs. Among these are Richard 
Lovelace (1618-1658), Thomas Carew (1598-1639?), 
and Sir John Suckling (1609-1641). Each of these 
men holds an assured though minor place in litera- 
ture by virtue of comparatively few poems ; yet each 
has contributed to it at least one lyric which has 
become a classic. The same fantastic spirit w^hich 
we have noted in Donne runs through much of their 
work, and it is also distinctly traceable in that of a 
group of poets in other respects widely separated. 
These are the religious poets, George Herbert 
(1593-1633), Richard Crashaw (1613-1650?), Henry 
Vaughan (1622-1695?), and Francis 
Quarles (1592-1644). Robert Herrick ^^^^"^ ^®'* 
(1591-1674), rises above these by his 
greater simplicity and directness, and in the finer 



172 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUKE 

quality of his lyrical gift. His limpid and altogether 
charming verse is troubled by no depth of thought or 
storm of passion. The most of his verse reflects the 
pagan spirit of those who lie at ease in the warm sun- 
shine ; content to enjoy, they sigh that life is but a day, 
and lament as the lengthening shadow draws near. 
The closing verse of his poem, Corinna's going a- 
Maying^ is a good example of his familiar mood : the 
inevitable chill of regret creeps into the sunshiny 
lyric of May day, and his laughter ends in a sigh : 

** Come, let us go, while we are in our prime ! 
And take the harmless folly of the time 1 

We shall grow old apace, and die 

Before we know our liberty. 

Our life is short ; and our days run 

As fast away as does the sun : 
And as a vapor, or a drop of rain 
Once lost, can ne'er be found again : 
* So when you or I are made 

A fable, song, or fleeting shade ; 

All love, all liking, all delight 

Lies drowned with us in endless night. 
Then while time serves, and we are but decaying, 
Come, my Corinna I come, let's go a-Maying." 

There is a captivating naturalness and freshness in 
Herrick's note ; the rural England of his time is 
green forever in his verse, the hedgerows are abloomr 
the Maypoles gay with garlands. He sings 

•• Of brooks, of blossoms, buds and bowers. 
Of April, May, and June, and July flowers."* 

* Hesperides. 



THE PURITAN IN LITERATURE IVS 

In Herrick's time England was racked with civil 
war, but neither the strife of religions nor the 
tumults in the state seem to shatter his Arcadia ; 
while king and Parliament are in deadly grapple, 
Merrick sings his dainty love-songs to Julia and An- 
thea, and babbles '' of green fields." 

In the midst of such poetry as this, slight, charm- 
ing, or fantastic, there rises the mighty voice of 
Milton. In Lycidas^ which may be said 
to conclude the poems of his earlier jji^on. 
period, Milton, too, asks the pagan 
question, " Seeing that life is short, is it not better 
to enjoy ? " but only to meet it with triumphant 
denial. This famous passage becomes of especial 
interest when we think that it was probably written 
with such poets as Carew and Herrick in mind ; when 
we recognize in it the high seriousness and religious 
faith of Puritanism, squarely confronting the nation's 
lighter mood. 

** Alas 1 what boots it with uncessant care 
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 
Were it not better done, as others use. 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade. 
Or with the tangles of l^eaera's hair ? 
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
(That last infirmity of noble mind), 
To scorn delights and live laborious days ; 
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze. 
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears. 
And slits the thin-spun life. ' But not the praise,' 
Phcebus replied, and touched my trembling ears ; 



174 INTEODUCTIOX TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

' Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 

Xor in the glistering foil 

Set off to the worid, nor in broad rumor lies, 

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 

As he pronounces lastly on each deed ; 

Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed/ "* 

JOHX MiLTo:^r 

Shakespearej the poet of man, was born in ruial 
England ; John Milton, into whose remote and lofty 
verse humanity enters so little, was born in Bread 
Street in the heart of London, December 9, 160S. 

His early years were passed in a sober and orderly 
Puritan household among influences of refinement 

Boyhood at ^^^^"^ "^"^^'f'' ^'' ^''^^'''' ^'''''^ ^^'^^''''' 
London, 1608- ^vas a scrivener, an occupation somewhat 

1624. corresponding to the modern convey- 

ancer, but he was also well known as a musical com- 
poser. The youuo't-r Milton's faculty for music had 
thus an opportunity for early development ; a fact of 
especial interest when we recall the distinctively 
musical character of his verse. 

Milton was early destined ^'for the study of 
humane letters,^' and given every educational advan- 
tage. He ha-i private instruction, and about 1620 
was sent to the famous Grammar School of St. Paul.f 
Here, to use his own expression, he worked*^ with 
eagerness," laying the foundation of his future blind- 
ness by intense application. He began to experiment 
in poetry, and we have paraphrases of two of the 
Psalms made by him at this time. 

*Lycidas, 11. 64 to 85. f See supra, p 101. 




JOHN MILTON 



THE PUEITAN IN LITERATURE 175 

In 1624 Milton entered Christ's College, Cam- 
bridge, where he continued to work with the same 
steady and regulated enthusiasm. His 
youth was spotless and high-minded, 10^.16^* 
with perhaps a touch of that austerity 
which deepened as he grew older. His face had an 
exquisitely refined and thoughtful beauty ; his soft 
light brown hair fell to his shoulders after the cava- 
lier fashion ; his figure was well-knit but slender ; 
his complexion, "exceeding fair." From his some- 
what delicate beauty, and from his blameless life, he 
gained the college nickname of "the Lady." The 
year after he entered college he wrote his first 
original poem, On the Death of a Fair Infant 
Dying of a Cough, and to this period also belong 
the resonant Hymn to the Nativity and other short 
pieces. 

After leaving Cambridge Milton spent nearly six 
years at his father's country house at Horton, a vil- 
lage near Windsor, and about seventeen 
miles from London. Here he lived with ]^°32?i63g 
books and nature, studying the classics 
and physical science, and leaving his studious quiet 
only for an occasional trip to town to learn some- 
thing new in music or in mathematics. 

Milton's Ij Allegro and II Denseroso, composed at 
this time, reflect both the young poet and his sur- 
roundings. Rustic life and supersti- ^tjati )> 
tions are there blended with idyllic and ''n Pen- 
pictures of the Horton landscape. In ^^^^so." 
Ij Allegro we hear the plowman whistle at his fur- 
row, the milkmaid sing at her work ; we see the 



176 INIBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUKE 

" Meadows trim, with daisies pied, 
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide," 

or mark the neighboring towers of Windsor 

'* Bosomed high in tufted trees." 

In both poems we detect Milton himself, a refined 
and serious nature, exquisitely responsive to w^hat- 
ever is best in life, with a quick and by no means 
narrow appreciation of tilings beautiful. The poems 
suggest to us a youthful Milton dreaming of gor- 
geous and visionary splendors in the long summer 
twilights, delighting in the plays of Jonson and 
Shakespeare, and spending lonely midnights in the 
loftiest speculations of philosophy ; a Milton whose 
beauty-loving and religious nature was moved by the 
solemn ritual of the Church of England under the 
" high embowed roof " of a cathedral. In these 
poems^ especially U Allegro^ Milton is very close to 
the Elizabethans. In their tinge of romance they 
remind us of Spenser, who, according to Masson, was 
Milton's poetical master, while in their lyrical move- 
ment they strikingly resemble certain songs of 
Fletcher in his pastoral drama. The Faithful Shep- 
^^ herdess.^ But Comus (1634), Milton's 

next w^ork, shows the decided growth of 
a new and distinctly Puritan spirit. In its form 
indeed, Comus belongs to the earlier age. It is a 
mask — one of those gorgeous dramatic spectacles 
which Renaissance England had learned from Italy, 

*See the beautiful lyric, ** Shepherds All and Maidens 
Fair," in act ii. scene 1, and ** Song of the Rfver God," in act 
iv, scene 1, of this play. 



THE PURITAN IN LITERaTURIE 111 

the favorite entertainment at tlie festivals of the 
rich, with which Ben Jonson so often delighted the 
court of James. Comiis has music and dancing, and 
it affords the requisite opportunity for scenic effects, 
yet there breathes through it the growing strain of 
moral earnestness. It shows us how purity and inno- 
cence can thread the darkest and most tangled ways 
of earth, unharmed and invincible, through the 
inherent might of goodness. In noble and memora- 
ble words Milton declares that if we once lose faith 
in this essential power of righteousness, and in the 
ultimate triumph of good over evil which that power 
is destined to secure, the very foundations of the 
universe give way. 

*'. . . Against the threats 
Of malice or of sorcery, or that power 
Which erring men call chance, this I hold firm : 
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, 
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled : 
Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm 
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. 
But evil on itself shall back recoil. 
And mix no more with goodness, when at last. 
Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, 
It shall be in eternal restless change 
Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail. 
The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
And earth's base builL on stubble.'' * 

We see the powers of Heaven descend to protect 
beleaguered innocence, and in the parting words of 
the attendant spirit, we find both the practical lesson 
of the mask and the guiding principle of Milton : 

* Comus, 



178 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURl 

** Mortals, that would follow me, • 
Love Virtue ; she alone is free. 
She can teach ye how to climb 

Higher than the spherj chime ; 

Or, if Virtue feeble were, 

Heaven itself would stoop to her.'' * 

In his next poem, the pastoral elegy of Lycidas 

(1637), the space between Milton and the Eliza- 

,,, . bethans continues to widen. From the 

jJvcidEis 

enthusiasm for virtue, he passes to an 

outburst of wrath and denunciation against those in 
the Church whom he considered the faithless shep- 
herds of the flock. 

** The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed," 

but the hour of retribution is at hand ; already the 

" two-handed engine at the door, 
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."f 

The first thirty years of Milton's life had thus been 

lived almost wholly "in the still air of delightful 

studies.'*]; Industrious and select read- 

1638-^1639 ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ systematic prepara- 
tion for the life yrork he set himself. Up 
to this time he wrote little, although that little was 
enough to giye him an honorable place among the 
poets of England ; but already he was full of great 
designs, writing in 1637, ^^I am pluming my wings 

* Comus. 

f Lycidas. For full analysis of this passage see Ruskin^ 
Sesanie and Lilus. 
X Milton, The Reason of Church Gournment, Int., book it 



THE PURITAN IN LITERATURE 179 

for a flight." To all he had learned from books he 
now added the widening influences of travel. 

Leaving England in April, 1638, he passed through 
Paris to Italy, meeting many learned and famous 
men, among the rest the old astronomer Galileo, to 
whom he refers in the early part of Paradise Lost, 

Meanwhile the civil troubles in England seemed 
gathering to a crisis, and Milton resolved to shorten 
liis trip, because, as he wrote, " I considered it base 
that while my fellow-countrymen were fighting at 
liome for liberty, I should be traveling abroad for 
intellectual culture." 

We learn from the JEpitaphium Damonis, a beauti- 
ful Latin elegy written at this time (1639), that Milton 
was already planning a great epic poem, ^ 
but this project was to be rudelj^ inter- England, and 

rupted. Enofland was on the brink of P^??®^°i?®» 

. . ^ 1639-1660. 

civil war, and after long years of prepa- 
ration Milton put aside his cherished ambitions and 
pursuits, and freely gave up his life and genius to the 
service of his country. Except for occasional sonnets, 
the greatest poet in England forced himself to write 
prose for more than twenty years. Most of this 
prose was written in the heat of "hoarse disputes," 
and is often marred by the bitterness and personal 
abuse which marked the controversies of that troubled 
time ; but this is redeemed in many places by earnest- 
ness and a noble eloquence. 

Prominent among the works of this prose period 
are the Tractate on Education (1644), and the splen- 
did Areopaffitica, a burning plea for the liberty of 
the press, of which it has been said : "Its defense of 



180 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

books, and the freedom of books, will last as long as 
there are writers and readers of books." * 

Meanwhile (1643), Milton had taken a hasty and 
unfortunate step in marrying Mary Powell, a young 
girl of less than half his age, of Roj^alist family, 
who proved unsuited to him in disposition and edu- 
cation. After the execution of Charles I. (1649) 
Milton ranged himself on the side of those who had 
taken this tremendous step, in a pamphlet on The 
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates^ and a month after 
its publication was made the Latin, or foreign. Secre- 
tary to the newly established Commonwealth. His 
pen continued to be busy for the state, until in 1652 
his eyes failed him through over-use, and he was 
stricken with total blindness. In this year his wife 
died, leaving him with three little girls. In 1656 he 
married Katherine Woodcock, who lived but little 
more than a year, and to whom he paid a touching 
tribute in one of his sonnets, f 

In these later years of Milton's life, during which 

he suffered blindness, sorrow, and broken health, the 

The later cause for which he had sacrificed so much 

poetic period, was lost, and England brought again 

1660-1674. ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^.^^j^ ^£ ^ g^^^^,^ YxxAg. Milton 

had been so vehement an advocate of the Parliament 
that we Avonder at his escape ; but, from whatever 
reason, he was not excepted from the general pardon 
put forth by Charles II. after his return (August 29, 

* Milton, Rev. Stopford Brooke, p. 45, Classical Writers 
Series. 

f *' Methought I saw my late espoused Saint 

Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave/' etc. 



THE PURITAN IN LITERATURE 181 

1660). In the riotous years that followed, when 
England, casting off decency and restraint, plunged 
into " the mad orgy of the Restoration," Milton 
entered in earnest upon the composition of Paradise 
Lost, singing with voice 

'* unchanged 
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days ; 
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, 
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round. 
And solitude." * 

In his little house in Bunhill Fields, near the Lon- 
don in which the pleasure-loving king jested at faith 
and honor, and held his shameless court amid 

**. . . The barbarous dissonance 
Of Bacchus and his revelers," . . . f 

the old poet lived his life of high contemplation and 
undaunted labor. At no time does Milton seem to 
us more worthy of himself ; he is so heroic that we 
hardly dare to pity him. But wherever the fault lay, 
his daughters, whose privilege it should have been to 
minister to him, greatly increased his burdens. They 
are said to have sold his books without his knowl- 
edge, and two of them counseled his maidservant to 
" cheat him in his marketings." 

When we reflect that the oldest daughter Avas but 
fourteen at the Restoration, and that the education 
of all had been neglected, w^e are inclined to judge 
less hardly, but we can scarcely wonder that Milton 
should have sought some means of relief from these 

* Paradise Loit, bk. vii 

\im. 



182 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

intolerable discomforts. This he happily found 
through his marriage with Elizabeth Minshull in 
1663. Yet even when matters were at the worst, 
Milton seems to have borne them with a beautiful 
fortitude, " having a certain serenity of mind not 
condescending to little things." His one faithful 
daughter, Deborah, speaks of his cheerfulness under 
his suflferings from the gout, and describes him as 
"the soul of conversation." In the spirit of his 
sonnet " On His Blindness," he was content to "only 
stand and wait," sending up the prayer out of his 
darkness, 

** So much the rather thou, Celestial Light, 
Shine inward." * 

The words of one who visited him at this time 
help to bring Milton before us, dressed neatly in 
black, and seated in a large armchair in a room with 
dark green hangings, his soft hair still falling over 
his shoulders, his sightless eyes still beautiful and 
clear. 

Paradise Lost was published in 1667, to be fol- 
lowed in 1671 by Paradise Regained. With the 
latter poem appeared the noble drama of Samson 
Agonistes (or the Wrestler), and with it Milton's 
work was ended. He died on November 8, 1674r 
so quietly that those with him knew not when h6 
passed away. 

** Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt. 
Dispraise, or blame ; nothing but well and fair. 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble." f 

* ParoM^e Lost, hk. iii. f Samion Agonistes, 1. 1721. 



THE PURITAN IN LITER ATUBE 18S 

We are stimulated and thrilled by the thought of 

Milton's life, as at the sight of some noble and heroic 

action. Obviously it is not free from 

our common human shortcoming's, but MUton's ideal 

of life, 
in its whole ideal and in its large results, 

we feel that it moves habitually on the higher levels, 

and is animated by no vulgar or ordinary aims. It 

is much that as a great poet Milton loved beauty, 

that as a great scholar he sought after truth. It is 

more that, above the scholar's devotion to knowledge, 

Milton set the citizen's devotion to country, the 

patriot's passionate love of liberty ; that above even 

the employment of his great poetic gift, he set the 

high resolve to make his life " a true poem," and to 

live 

" As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye." * 

He has accordingly left us an example of solemn 
self-consecration to a lofty purpose, early undertaken, 
and steadfastly and consistently pursued. Milton's 
life was lived at high tension ; he not only set an 
exacting standard for himself, he was also inclined 
to impose it upon others. He is so sublime that some 
of us are inclined to be a trifle ill at ease in his pres- 
ence, or are apt to be repelled by a strain of severity 
far different from the sweet companionableness of 
Shakespeare. In Milton's stringent and austere ideal 
we miss at times the saving grace of Shakespeare's 
charity, or we are almost moved to exclaim with Sit 
Toby: 

"^Sonnet ** On his Arriving at the Age of Twenty-three." 



184 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

'• Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall b* 
DO more cakes and ale ? " "^ 

In Samson Agonistes, when Delilah pleads before 
her husband that she has sinned through weakness, 
she is met by an uncompromising reply: 

**'. . . If weakness may excuse. 
What murderer, what traitor, parricide, 
Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it ? 
All wickedness is weakness, that plea, therefore, 
With God or man will gain thee no remission."! 

From such a rigorous insistence on condemnation 
in strict accord with the offense, our minds revert 
to Portia's inspired plea for mercy, J or to Isabella's 
searching question : 

'' How would you be 
If He which is the top of judgment should 
But judge you as you are ? " § 

However we may appreciate these differences in 
the spirit of two great poets, we do Milton wrong if 

we fail to honor and reverence him for 
j.Qg|.^ that in which he was supremely great. 

We must remember that this intense 
zeal for righteousness was a master passion in the 
highest spirits of Milton's time, and that it is hard to 
combine zeal with tolerance. It is but natural that 
in the midst of the corrupt England of the Restora- 
tion, the almost solitary voice of the nation's better 

* Twelfth Night, act ii. scene 3. 

]( Samson Agonistes, 1. 831. 

X F. supra y p. 145. 

^Measure for Measure, actii. scene 2, 



THE PUKITAN IN LITERATURE 185 

self could not prophesy smooth things. This Pui'itan 
severity is especially marked in the three great poems 
of Milton's later life. As a young man he had chosen 
a purely romantic subject for his projected epic — the 
story of Arthur ; his maturer interests led him to 
abandon this for a purely religious and doctrinal one ; 
he treated of the fall of man and the origin of evil, 
that he might ^'justify the ways of God to men." 
Paradise Lost, with its sequel. Paradise Regained^ 
constitutes the one great contribution of the English 
genius to the epic poetry of the world. The style of 
these great works alone shows genius of the highest 
and rarest kind. By the incomparable dignity and 
majesty of the verse, with its prolonged and solemn 
music, and the curious involution of its slowly un- 
folding sentences, we are lifted out of the ordinary 
or the trivial, into the incalculable spaces of that 
region into which it is the poet's object to transport 
us. In Paradise Lost, caught in the tremendous 
sweep of Milton's imagination, we see our whole 
universe, with its circling sun and planets hanging 
suspended in the black abyss of chaos, 

** In bigness like a star." 

Heaven, "the deep tract of Hell," and that illimit- 
able and chaotic region which lies between, make up 
the vast Miltonic background, where legions of 
rebellious angels strive with God, and wherein is 
enacted the mysterious drama, not of men, but of the 
race of Man. 

The attitude of Shakespeare toward that unseen 



186 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and mysterious region which lies beyond the limits 

of our human experience, was that of the 
Milton and , . tt i • ^i 

Shakespeare. ^^^ learning. He places us in the 

midst of our familiar world, and there 
we only catch at times the half-intelligible whisper 
of voices coming out of those blank surrounding 
spaces which no man can enter. Hamlet, slipping out 
of this little earthly circle of noise and light, can but 
whisper on the brink of the great blackness of dark- 
ness, that 

** The rest is silence." 

But Milton, with the new daring of Puritanism, 
took for his province that " undiscovered country" 
beyond the walls of this goodly prison, as Shakes- 
peare, through Hamlet, called the world. At the be- 
ginning of his great epic he invokes " The Heavenly 
Muse," 

*' That on the secret top 
Of Oreb or of Sinai, didst inspire, 
That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed, 
In the beginning how the heavens and earth 
Rose out of chaos." * 

He looks to the Hill of Sion, 

** And Siloa's brook that flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God. " * 

rather than to Parnassus, and by Celestial guidance 
intends to soar " above the Aonian mount," and to 
pursue 

** Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."* 
* Paradise Lost, bk. i. 



THE PUBITAN IN LITEEATURE 187 

STUDY LIST 

JOHN MILTON 

1 . L' Allegro and II Penseroso. Palgrave points out in 
his preface to the Golden Treasury that these are the earliest 
purely descriptive lyrics in the language. Rev. Stopford 
Brooke speaks of them as describing **the bright and the 
thoughtful aspects of Nature." This is true, but we should 
rather regard them as showing us Nature as she appears to the 
cheerful and to the pensive or meditative man. The poems 
are not objective or impersonal descriptions of scenery. In 
each we have not merely an aspect of Nature, but the mood of 
an observer. Nature is seen through the medium of this mood. 
( F. Coleridge's Dejection, An Ode, and also note on the same, 
p. 281. Cf. Ruskin on "The Pathetic Fallacy,'' in Modern 
Painters.) Contrast these companion poems, and notice close 
parallelism. The Allegro, which begins with the early morn- 
ing and ends at night, is paralleled thought by thought, scene 
by scene, with the Penseroso, which begins with the late even- 
ing and ends toward the noon of the next day. But the Pen- 
seroso closes with the wish — which, not paralleled in the Alle- 
gro, makes us know that Milton preferred the pensive to the 
mirthful temper — that he may live on into old age and con 
templative life, 

*' Till old experience do attain, 
To something like prophetic strain." 

Cf. Spenser for general poetic tone ; also, especially for metri- 
cal effect, songs in Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, Note 
description of rustic life, superstitions, etc., and explain clas- 
sical allustons. Consult Stopford A. Brooke's Milton, Classi- 
cal Writers Series, pp. 18-19 ; Shairp's Poetic Interpretation 
of Natwre, pp. 186-190; Notes in Masson's edition of Milton 
and in Hales's Longer English Poems. 

2. Lycidas. This poem is pastoral in form, ''with its in- 
troduction and its epilogue, and between them the monody 
of the Shepherd who has lost his friend (S. A. Brooke's 
Milton, p. 26). It is also an elegy or poem of mourning for 



188 INTBOBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEB 

the dead. Look up the Dature of the pastoral and the elegy, 
and their history in English and in classical literature. Find 
derivation and exact meaning of elegy. ** Elegiac poems may 
be distinguished as objectiTe or subjective, according as theii' 
tenor and general aim may be either simply to occupy them^ 
selves with the fortunes, character, and acts of the departed, 
or to found a train of musings having reference to self, or at 
least strongly colored by the writer's personality, upon the fact 
of bereavement'' (Arnold's English Literature, pp. 445-446). 
Give examples of elegies in each of these classes. To which 
group does Lycidas belong ? Who was the subject of Lycidas ? 
When and under what circumstances was it written ? Does 
the poem seem to you to express a deep and genuine grief, or 
to be merely formal and conventional in tone ? If the latter, 
do you consider this a fault ? Can you name any elegy which 
■ seems to you to express a more genuine personal grief ? Cf. 
Shelley's Adonais, and latter part of Theocritus' first ode, 
Thyrsis. Note description of Welsh coast under classic 
names. See notes in Masson's edition of Milton, and Hale's 
Longer English Poems ; Brooke's Milton, pp. 25-27 ; Garnett's 
Milton, p. 48 et seq.: Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies ; and for the 
elegy, Arnold's History of English Literature, p. 445 et seq. 

3. Paradise Lost, bks. i.-iii. Look up, as preliminary 
study, history and nature of the epic ; its place in the develop^ 
ment of poetry as an art, etc., etc. Note Theodore Watts' 
division of this form of poetry into epics of growth and epics 
of art ; see article on '* Poetry" in Encyclopedia Britannica. 
For the epic in general, t". Gummere's Handhoolc of Poetry for 
Students of EnglishVerse, a most convenient book for general 
use. For interesting instance of a survival of the "epic of 
growth" in modern times, v. Introduction to Hapgood's Ejnc 
Songs of Bussia. For Paradise Lost, see general reference 
given in Section 5. 

4. Samsox Agoxistes has been well edited by J. Churton 
Collins, Oxford : Clarendon Press. 

5. Biography axd Criticism. Li^ces : Garnett's, in Great 
Writers Series ; Pattison's, in English Men of Letters Series ; 
Milton, in Johnson's Lives of the Poets ; Masson's Three Devih, 



THE PURITAN IN LlTERATURl: 18^ 

Luther's, Miltoii's, Goethe's, and other Essays. The essay in 
same volume on the "Youth of Milton" contains interesting 
comparison between Milton and Shakespeare. Essay on 
*' Milton" in Seeley's Lectures and Essays; Stoptord Brooke's 
Milton, in Student's Literary Series. Macaulay's Essay on 
Milton ; M. Arnold's Essay on Milton. 

Among the recent studies of Milton are: Milton, by Walter 
Raleigli; John Milton, A Short Study of his Life and Works, by 
W. P. Trent; An Introduction to the Prose and Poetical Works 
of John Milton, comprising all the autobiographic ])assages in 
his woi'ks, etc., by Hiram Corson. 

History: S. R. Gardiner's series of histories cover this 
period. Masson's Life and Times of Milton j Macaulay's 
History of England, from accession of James II, 



PART III 

THE FRENCH INFLUENCE. i66o-cir. 1750 

THE ENGLAND OF THE EESTOKATION 

The Restoration is one of the great landmarks in 
the history of England. It means more than a 
change in government ; it means the nv g ^ 
beginning of a new England, in life, in the Eestora- 
thought, and in literature. On every ^^°^* 
side we find outward signs of the nation's different 
mood. The theaters were reopened, and frivolous 
crowds applauded a new kind of drama, light, witty, 
and immoral. The Maypoles were set up again, bear- 
baiting revived, the Puritan Sabbath disregarded. 
The king had come to enjoy his own again, and 
thousands who had grown restive under Puritanic 
restraints flung aside all decency to recklessly enjoy it 
with him. Those whom the Puritan had overthrown 
were again uppermost, and they knew no moderation 
in the hour of their triumph. The cause and faith of 
Cromwell and of Milton were loaded with insult and 
contempt, and the snuffling Puritan was baited and 
ridiculed, as in the clever but vulgar doggerel of 
Butler's Hudihras, Had Cromwell lived, or had Eng- 
land remained a Puritan Commonwealth, the spirit 
which Droduced Wither, Milton, and Bunyan, might 

181 



l92 INTRODUCfiON TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

have continued to enrich the literature ; but with the 
return of Charles II. we pass abruptly into a new 
literary period expressive of the nation's altered 
mood. 

During the two centuries preceding the Restora- 
tion, the genius of England had been inspired and 

directed by Italy, but about the time of 
influence that event English writers began to turn 

for guidance to the brilliant and polished 
literature of France. This seems to have been due 
to a combination of causes. Throughout the whole 
of Europe the literary influence of Italy had sensibly 
declined, and at this time was being partially replaced 
by that of France. Politically, France had gained 
great ascendency through the ability of her famous 
statesmen, Richelieu and Mazarin, and Louis XIV. 
(1643-1715), the most splendid living embodiment 
of despotic kingship, had gathered about his court a 
brilliant group of wa'iters. Theological eloquence 
was represented by Bossuet and Fenelon, meditative 
prose hj Pascal, tragedy by Corneille and Racine, 
and comedy by Moliere, with the single exception of 
Shakespeare the greatest dramatist of the modern 
world. It was but natural that England, in common 
with other nations, should respond to the example of 
this rising literature ; but her readiness to learn from 
France seems to have been heightened by other 
causes. Charles II. had brought with him from his 
exile on the Continent a fondness for things French, 
and, in particular, a liking for the French style of 
tragedy. France was powerful in the very heart of 
Charles' court, and his reign shows us the shameful 



THE ENGLAND OF THE KESTORATION 193 

spectacle of an English king seeking to undermine 
English liberty by the aid of a French king's gold. 

Doubtless the French tastes of the king were not 
without their effect on literature ; but a still more 
important reason for the English follow- rj^^^ Frencli 
ing of French models remains to be attention to 
noticed. One great characteristic of ®^*^y o^^* 
the French literature of this period was the impor- 
tance it attached to literary form, that is, to the finish, 
elegance, and correctness with which the thought 
was expressed. Recent efforts had been made to 
improve and purify the language, and from this task 
the French scholars turned their attention to the 
rules of literary composition. Boileau became the 
literary lawgiver of the day by his Art of Poetry 
(1673), in which he urged writers to avoid the bril- 
liant extravagances of the Italians, and strive to 
write with exactness and " good sense." Now this 
doctrine met with especial favor, because it exactly 
suited the general trend and tendency of the times. 
Throughout Europe the creative impulse of the 
Renaissance was dying. No longer sustained by that 
overmastering desire to create, which, by its very 
truth and intensity, leads genius to an artistic expres- 
sion, men came to rely more on such external guid- 
ance as could be had from the maxims of composition. 
England shared in this prevailing tendencj^, and 
naturally took for her pattern the great French 
exponents of the congenial doctrine. 

Edmund Waller (1605-1687) was one of the earliest 
of these followers of the French, and was for some 
time looked up to as the great refiner of language 



194 INTBOBUCTiON TO ENGLISH LtTEEATURE 

and versification ; but the real head of the Critical 
School, as this group of writers is called, was John 
Dryden (1631-1700), a man of logical and masculine 
intellect, and of finished literary skilL 
Dryden rises above the smaller men of 
his day by the weight of sheer intellectual force. 
From the Restoration to the close of the century he 
dominated English letters, " the greatest man of a 
little age." He represents the new critical spirit and 
the desire for moderation and correctness of literary 
form. " Nothing," he declared, " is truly sublime 
that is not just and proper ; " and he brought to his 
work a cold and critical intellect, and the most exact- 
ing and conscientious care. In his adaptation of an 
English translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry, he 
announces his own principles of composition — princi- 
ples which distinguish the writers of his school : 

** Gently make haste, of labor not afraid ; 
A hundred times consider what you've said ; 
Polish, repolish, every color lay, 
And sometimes add, but oftener take away.*'* 

Dryden's careful study of literature as an art is 
further shown by his prose criticisms. It was his 
custom to preface his plays and poems 
crTc ^^ with a discussion, explaining or defend- 
ing the methods upon which the work 
had been composed ; and his Essay on Dramatic 
Poetry (1667), in which he advocates the use of 
rhyme in serious plays, holds an assured place in the 
history of English criticism. 

* The Art of Poetry, canto i. 1. 171. 




JOHN DRYDEN 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 195 

Immense intellectual force, and an ability to argue 
in verse, two of the most obvious elements of Dry- 
den's genius, lift his satires and didactic 
poems into a foremost place in the liter- g^^^^^g^ " 
ature. His Absalom and Achitophel 
(1681), the greatest political satire of the language, 
was written in the interests of the court party, 
and contains a masterly attack upon the Earl of 
Shaftesbury, who was then on trial for high treason. 
The portrayal of Shaftesbury, under the name of 
Achitophel, is justly famous, and is a good illustra- 
tion of Dryden's peculiar power. 

*' Of these the false Achitophel was first ; 
A name to all succeeding ages curst : 
For close designs and crooked counsels fit ; 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ; 
Restless, unfixed in principles and place ; 
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ; 
A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
Fretted the pygmy body to decay, 
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 

A daring pilot in extremity ; 

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high 
He sought the storms ; but for a calm unfit. 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
And thin partitions do their bounds divide ; 
Else why should he, with wealth and honor blest, 
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ? 
Punish a body which he could not please ; 
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 
And all to leave what with his toil he won, 
To that unfeather'd two-legged thing, a son." * 

* Absalom and Achitophel, pt. i. 1. 150. 



196 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

This masterpiece, which established its author's 
fame as a satirist, was followed by The Medal (1682), 
a second attack on Shaftesbury, and by MacFleck- 
noe (1682). In the latter, Shadwell, an otherwise 
obscure writer of the political faction opposite to that 
of Dry den, is immortalized by the stinging lash of 
the poet's ridicule. Flecknoe, who is about to abdi- 
cate from the throne of Dullness in favor of Shadwell, 
is made to declare : 

** Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he. 
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. 
The rest to some faint meaning make pretense. 
But Shadwell never deviates into sense. 
Some beams of wit on other souls ma}^ fall, 
Strike through, and make a lucid interval ; 
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, 
His rising fogs prevail upon the day. " * 

The Religio Laid (1682), and The Hind and the 

Panther (1687), are the great examples of Dryden's 

■n A » power of reasoning in verse. The first 

power of is a defense of the Church of England; 

reasoning in i\^q second, written after the accession 
verse 

of the Roman Catholic James, and after 

Dryden's change of faith, is an elaborate argument 

in behalf of the Church of Rome. 

In lyric poetry Dryden is known by his majestic 

odes on St. Cecilia'^s Day and Alexander'^s Feast^ 

„, , . and by the beautiful Memorial Ode on 
His lyrics. . 

Mistress Anne Killegrew,\ in which he 

* MacFlechnoey 1. 17. 

f This beautiful Ode is given in Ward's English Poets. 



THE ENGLAND OF THE KESTORATION 197 

speaks with touching humility of his own short- 
comings. 

Dryden is emphatically a representative English 
poet. By his life, character, and the spirit of his 
work, he belongs to the changed Eng- 
land which had risen out of the over- ]J^ii^^^ 
throw of Puritanism, and he embodies 
with unmistakable vigor and distinctness many of 
those marked features which were to characterize 
the nation and its literature for years to come. 
Outside the immediate circle of literature there are 
many indications of this change. The more coldly 
speculative and intellectual temper of the time is 
shown in the growth of a scientific spirit, shared even 
by the flippant king. The foundation of the Royal 
Society, in 1662, is one of the outcomes of this new 
science, while among the men busy in extending the 
knowledge of the physical world, towers the great 
figure of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). It was an 
age of unimpassioned logic, of intellectual curiosity ; 
its keen-edged intelligence occupied itself with 
theories of government and with the speculations of 
philosophy ; its frigid good sense turned to biog- 
raphy and memoirs, to history, criticism, and letters. 
Thus, as we should expect, it was emphatically an 
age of prose. The relations of Dryden to such a 
time are close and obvious, and he plainly defines for 
us its mental temper. He had clearness, mental 
grasp, great ease and finish of style, and a hard- 
headed and masculine powder ; but we miss in him 
the glowing imagination of the Elizabethans, their 
mounting ardor of emotion, their love of nature and 



198 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of beauty, their moods of exquisite tenderness. 
With Dryden, poetry became the coadjutor of poli- 
tics, and the handmaid of religious controversy. We 
leave behind us the passion of Lear, or the rapt 
visions of Paradise Lost, to pass into a new world of 
fashion and wit, of logic and vituperation. 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ESSAY 

With new popular needs and a wider reading 

public came important changes in literature and in 

^, - .the position of the author. Before this, 
Ckanged posi- ^ . . * 

tionofthe authorship, as a recognized calling, did 
author. ^^^^ exist outside of the writers for the 

stage ; but from about the reign of Queen Anne 
(1702-1714) we note the signs of change. During 
the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. the successful 
playwright reached a large public, but for the writer 
of books the circle of readers was comparatively 
small. Men did not attempt to make a living by 
authorship alone, and writing was accordingly an 
occasional occupation, an amusement or a mere 
graceful accomplishment. Hooker was a clergyman ; 
Bacon unhappily gave to knowledge only such time 
as he could spare from law and politics ; Raleigh 
and Sidney represent the large class of courtiers and 
gentlemen who wrote in the elegant leisure of bril- 
liant and active lives, while Milton in his prose, with 
Prynne and Collier, are examples of those who used 
books as a means of controversy. That large read- 
ing public which in our own day enables the author 
to live solely by his pen did not then exist, and 
before the Civil War books were commonly published 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 199 

through some powerful patron. But as wealtli and 
leisure increased the general intelligence widened, 
and the author gradually gained the support of a 
large number of readers. Publishing became more 
profitable, and in the reign of Charles II. the number 
of publishing houses greatly increased. In Queen 
Anne's reign a close connection existed between 
literature and politics, and many authors were 
encouraged by the gift of government positions.* 

The author was still dependent on a powerful 
patron, but lie was gradually struggling toward 
direct reliance on the public support. During Anne's 
reign the greater towns, and especially London, 
became more and more centers of social and intel- 
lectual activity. Coffee-houses were established in 
great numbers, and there the leading men in politics, 
literature, or fashion, habitually met to smoke and 
discuss the latest sensations over the novel luxury of 
coffee. Such friction made men's minds more alert, 
witty, and alive to the newest thing. Before 1715 
there were nearly two thousand of these coffee-houses 

* ** The splendid efflorescence of genius under Queen Anne 
was in a very great degree due to ministerial encouragement, 
which smoothed the path of many whose names and writings 
are familiar in countless households where the statesmen of 
that day are almost forgotten. Among those who obtained 
assistance from the government either in the form of pensions, 
appointments, or professional promotion, were Xcwton and 
Locke, Addison, Swift, Steele, Prior, Gay, Rowe, Congreve, 
Tick ell, Parnell, and Philips, while a secret pension was 
offered to Pope, who was legally disqualified by his religion 
from receiving government favors." — England in the Eigh* 
'teentli Century, bj W. B. H. Lecky, voL vi p, 462. 



200 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

alone, representing an immense variety of social 

classes and political opinions.* With the spread of 

intelligence and the life of the club and coffee-house 

the rise of periodical literature is directly connected. 

Moreover, the liberty of the press, for which Milton 

^. , strove, had been established since 1695, 

Rise of . . 

periodical SO that many things favored the rise of 

literature. journalism. The first successful daily 
newspaper, the Daily Courant, was started in 1702, 
and eminent men began to find a new channel of 
expression in periodicals. In 1704 Defoe began his 
famous Review, This paper, published two or three 
times a week, was written entirely b}^ himself and 
was not confined to news. His articles on policy, 
trade, etc., resemble finished essays, and his discus- 
sions of literature, manners, and morals in the 
monthly supplement called ^^Advice from the Scan- 
dalous Club," may be regarded as forerunners of the 
essays in ^The Taller and Spectator. Yet The Tatler 
(1709), part newspaper and part magazine, was such 
an advance on all earlier attempts in this direction 
that it may regarded as beginning a new order of 
periodical literature, f 

The Tatler came out on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and 
Saturdays ; it was sold for a penny, and in addition 
to theater notices, advertisements, and current news, 

^ Sidney's England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 186. 
According to Halton, I^ew View of London, vol. 1. p. 30, there 
were nearly three thousand coffee-houses in England in 1708. 
See Lieckj's England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 616. 

f A. good account of this will be found in Courthope's Life 
of Addison, chap, i., in English Mep o^ Letters Series. 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 201 

it contained an essay which often treated lightly and 
good-humoredly some topic of the day. Such a paper 
was precisely what the new conditions of town life 
required. The floating talk of the clubs and coffee- 
houses was caught by the essayist and compressed into 
a brief, witty, and graceful literary form. In the place 
of ponderous sentences, moving heavily under their 
many-syllabled words and their cumbrous weight oi 
learning, we have a new prose — deft, quick, sparkling^ 
and neither too serious nor too profound. It is as 
though the age had abandoned the massive broad- 
sword of an earlier time, to play at thrust and parry 
with the foils. The creators of this new periodical 
literature are Sir Richard Steele and his friend Joseph 
Addison. 

Richard Steele (1672-1729) was a warm-hearted, 
lovable, and impulsive Irishman. Left fatherless 

before he was six years old, he o-ained 

-. . . 1 ^/ 1 11- Steele, 

admission to the Charterhouse school m 

London, through the influence of his uncle. Here he 

met Addison, liis junior by two months, but greatly 

his senior in discretion ; and the two schoolboys 

began a beautiful and almost lifelong friendship. 

Thackeray writes of this period of Steele's life : '^ I 

am afraid no good report could be given 

by his masters and ushers of that thick- Thackeray 

•^ on Steele, 

set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted 

little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped 

deservedly a great number of times. Though he had 

very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do 

his lessons for him, and only took just as much 

fet'ouble as should enable him to scuflie through his 



202 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

exercises, and by good fortune escape tlie flogging 
block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have 
myself inspected, but only as an amateur, that instru- 
ment of righteous torture still existing, and in occa- 
sional use, in a secluded private apartment of the old 
Charterhouse school ; and have no doubt it is the 
very counterpart, if not the ancient and interesting 
machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted 
himself to the tormentors. 

"Besides being very kind, lazy, and good natured, 
this boy went invariably into debt with the tart- 
woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into pecuni- 
ary, or rather promissory^ engagements Avith the 
neighboring lollipop venders and piemen — exhibited 
an early fondness for drinking mum and sack, and 
borrowed from all his comrades who had money to- 
lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements 
here made of Steele's early life ; but if the child is 
father of the man, the father of young Steele of 
Merton, who left Oxford without taking a degree, 
and entered into the Life Guards— the father qf Cap- 
tain Steele of Lucas' Fusiliers, who got liis company 
through the patronage of my Lord Cutts — the father 
of Mr. Steele, the Commissioner of Stamps, tlie 
editor of The Gazette^ The Taller^ and Spectator ^ the 
expelled member of Parliament, and the author of 
the Tender Husband and the Conscious Lovers ^' if 
man and boy resembled each other, Dick Steele, the 
schoolboy, must have been one of the most generous, 
good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever 
conjugated the verb tupto, I beat, tuptoniai^ I am 
whipped, in any school in Great Britain* 



THE ENGLAND OE THE RESTORATION 203 

" Almost every gentleman who does me the honor 
to hear me will remember that the very greatest 
character which he has seen in the course of his life, 
and the person to whom lie has looked up with the 
greatest wonder and reverence, was the head boy of 
his school. . . I have seen great men in my time, 
but never such a great one as that head boy of 
my childhood ; we all thought he must be Prime 
Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting him in 
after life to find he was no more than six feet high. 

"Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, con- 
tracted such an admiration in the years of his 
childhood, and retained it faithfully througli his life. 
Through the school, and through the w^orld, Avbither- 
soever his strange fortune led this erring, wayward, 
affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his 
head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison 
did his best themes. He ran on Addison' messages ; 
fagged for him and blacked his shoes ; to be in Joe's 
company was Dick's greatest pleasure ; and he took 
a sermon or caning from his monitor w^ith the most 
boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affection." * 

Leaving school, Steele went to Oxford, then en- 
tered the army, and ultimately rose to the rank of 
captain. He wrote a religious work, Tht Christian 
Hero^ by which he complained he gained a reputation 
for piety which he found it difficult to live up to. 
To counteract this, and to " enliven his character," 
he wrote a comedy called The Funeral (1701). 
After producing several other plays Steele drifted 
into journalism, and after writing for a paper called 
* Thackeray's English Uumorists, p. 200. 



204 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISa LITER ATUBE 

The Gazette^ founded The Tatler, After a few 
weeks Addison became a contributor, but even before 
Ste le f ds ^^^^^ ^^^^ success of the paper was a&sured. 
"The Tat- The Tatler was discontinued in I'Zll, to 
ler," 1709. make way for The Spectator^ a joint 
enterprise of Addison and Steele. This ran until 
1713, when it was succeeded by The Guardian^ 
the last periodical for which the friends worked 
together. Steele was extravagant, good-natured, 
and fond of fine clothes. When he had money 
he spent it like a prince, and so did not have it 
long. He " outlived his wife, his income, his health, 
almost everj^thing but his kind heart. That ceased 
to ti'ouble him in 1729, when he died, worn out and 
almost forgotten by his contemporaries, in Wales, 
where he had the remnant of a propertJ^" * 

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was more reserved, 
shy, and dignified than his rollicking friend Dick 
Steele. He was the son of a clergyman, 
and he had himself so much of the cler- 
ical gravity that a contemporary called him " a par- 
son in a tye-wig." Like Steele he went to Oxford 
after leaving the Charterhouse school, but unlike 
Steele won a scholarship by some Latin verses. Like 
most of the authors of the time Addison was obliged 
to depend on patronage for a living. He was granted 
a pension in return for a laudator}^ poem on the Peace 
of Ryswick (1697). This he lost on the king's 
death (William HI., 1702), and in the following 
year he returned to England from a Continental tour, 
with no certain prospects. Poetry came a second 
* Thackeray's English Humorists, p. 210. 




JOSEPH ADDISON 



THE Ex^GLAND OF TE^ BESTORATION 205 

time to his aid. He made a great hit by a poem 
called TAt, Campaign^ in which he celebrated the 
Duke of Marlborough's great victory at Blenheim, 
and was appointed to a government position. In 
1713 he brought out his tragedy of Cato, which gave 
him a prodigious reputation, but, as we know, he had 
before this begun a work of even more permanent 
importance in his contributions to Tlie Tatler and 
Spectator, As an essayist, Addison possessed a finer 
art than that of Steele, yet it was Steele who first 
suggested what Addison brought to perfection. This 
was the case with the famous character of Sir Roger 
de Coverley, the typical country gentleman of the 
time. Both Steele and Addison wrote ^^^jgQi^ ^^^ 
as moralists, and in their work one sees Steele social 
that the reaction against the excesses of ^®^o^^®^s. 
the Restoration had already begun. Their method 
as reformers is in keeping with the spirit of the time. 
They did not assail vice and folly with indignant 
eloquence, but, with delicate tact and unvarying 
good humor, the}^ gently made them ridiculous. 
Addison regretted the emptiness and frivolity of the 
fashionable women, and set himself to bring a new 
interest into their lives. '' There are none," he says, 
"to whom tliis paper will be more useful than to the 
female world," * and his direct appeal to the women 
readers is memorable in the history of the literature. 
Such papers as "The Fine Lady's Journal," "The 
Exercise of the Fan," " The Dissection of a Beau's 
Head," and of a " Coquette's Heart," with their minute 
observation and kindly satire of manners, are highly 
* Spectator, No 10. Read this entire paper. 



206 iNTRODUCtlON TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

representative. In *^Ned Softly," Addison laughs at 
the literary doctrines of the day, showing us against 
a background of club life a '*' very pretty poet," who 
studies the approved maxims of poetry before sitting 
down to write, and who spends a whole hour in 
adapting the turn of the words in two lines. 

Finally, as we shall see shortly, the character 

studies in the early eighteenth-century essays were 

The essay ^^^ forerunners of a new art. Richard- 

and the son and Fielding, and their innumerable 

^°^®^* successors, were to continue in the novel 

of domestic life that work which, in his own fashion, 

the essayist had so inimitably begun. 

The character and work of Addison cannot be better 
summed up than in the famous tribute of Macaulay, 
who calls him ^' the unsullied statesman ; 
Addison. ^^® accomplished scholar, the great sat- 
irist who alone knew how to use ridicule 
without abusing it ; who, without inflicting a wound, 
effected a great social reform, and who reconciled 
wit and virtue after a long and painful separation, 
during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, 
and virtue by fanaticism." * 

STUDY LIST 
ADDISOJSr AND STEELE 

Biography and Criticism. The Select Essays of Addison 
together with Macaulay's essay on Addison's Life and Writ- 
ings, edited by Samuel Thurber, contains some of the best 
essays and will be found a valuable book. Courthope's Life 
of Addison, English Men of Letters Series. Austin Dobson's 

* Macaulay, Essay on Life and Writings of Addison, 



THE ENGLAND OE THE KESTORATION 207 

Life of Steele, in English Worthies. Austin Dobson's Eigh- 
teenth Century Essays contains selections from the most impor- 
tant periodicals of the century. Days with Sir Boger de 
Coverley (Macmillan) is an attractive collection of the De 
Coverley papers only, and may be used with class. Thack- 
eray's English Humorists, also the passages in his Henry 
Esmond about Addison and Steele, will be found interesting. 



THE HISTORY OF THE NOVEL 

We can understand why it w^as that this unideal and 
unromantic epoch, with its growth of prose, its pre- 
vailing common sense, its firm grasp of the things 
which can be seen and handled, should have brought 
one especial kind of fiction to a higher development 
than it had yet known in England. The hard prac- 
tical intelligence of the time, weak in high emotions 
and in its sense of the mystical and the unseen, was cor- 
respondingly strong in the power of closely observing 
and faithfully reproducing the passing aspects of 
everyday life. Such conditions favored the rise of 
the novel of domestic life and manners, which, in the 
hands of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, became 
virtually a new literary form. Yet the novel, w^hile 
one of the most original and important contributions 
which the eighteenth century made to literature, 
was not a wholly new creation, but rather a new 
form given to a very ancient kind of writing by the 
changed temper of tlie times. In part, at least, it 
grew out of tlie earlier romances and sliort stories, 
just as the Elizabethan drama grew out of, yet dif- 
fered from, the earlier dramatic forms. To make 



208 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

this clear, it is necessary to speak briefly of the 
history of English fiction before this time. 

The love of a story is so widespread and deep- 
seated that it seems natural to the race. We delight 
in stories before we are out of the 

the^^ovel nursery, and the world has loved to 
tell and hear them since its childhood. 
Many of the noblest stories of early times were 
in verse, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey ^ the 
latter perhaps the most fascinating story of an- 
tiquity. To this class our own Beowulf belongs. 
We may thus think of the epic poem as a kind of 
exalted precursor of the novel, supplying, after its 
own fashion, the same deep, human need. Besides 
the great stories in verse, there was, of course, an 
immense mass of myth and folk-lore, and some of 
these world-stories have never ceased to delight 
children down to our day. 

After the classic epics, we reach another stage of 
development in the mediaeval romance. This, in its 
original meaning, was a narrative poem in one of the 
romance dialects, as old French or Proven9al. These 
romances may be thought of as a mediaeval form of 
the epic ; they embodied the chivalric ideas peculiar 
to the time, and marked an important step toward 
the creation of the novel. 

We have seen how these romances came into 
England with the Norman Conquest, passing from 
French to English paraphrases in the 
h?En ^land^^ metrical romances of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. Another step toward the novel is 
taken when some of these stories are retold in English 



tfiE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 209 

prose : Malory's Morte d'^ Arthur may be taken as 
an example of this important change in form. The 
revival of learning infused new life into English 
story-telling, as it did into almost every other form 
of literary art, and in the sixteenth century the 
romances increased in number and importance. Be- 
sides the romances produced by English writers, 
great numbers of Italian, French, and Spanish stories 
were translated or paraphrased, and, put forth 
separately or in collections, became widely popular. 
Paynter's Palace of Pleasure^ (vol. i. 1566), a good 
example of such collections, contained stories from 
Boccaccio, " and other Italian and f rench authours." 
From Spain came the famous romance, Amadis de 
Oaul. Through such channels a flood of foreign 
romance poured in upon the English. Romantic 
stories piled on the London bookstalls, and eagerly 
bought and read, furnished plots and suggestions to 
the English dramatist and story-teller. Shakespeare 
nsed them, and Sidney modeled his Arcadia in part 
upon the Aynadis de Gaul. 

The general tone of the Elizabethan stories was 
poetic and fanciful ; many of them were pastoral 
or chivalric in character. It is true that both Greene 
and Nash wrote stories, ^^ the main object of which 
was to paint, to the life, ordinary men and char- 
acters," but most of the famous stories of the time 
were as remote from the prosaic realities of existence 
as a Watteau shepherdess. Thus More's Utopia^ if we 
choose to consider it a romance at all, introduces us 
to a world that exists only as an ideal ; John Lyly's 
JEhiphues is couched in a highly-wrought and affected 



210 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Style, elaborately artificial, although close enough to 
the strange humor of the time to become a passing 
affectation of the court. Lodge's Hosaliiid — the 
original of Shakespeare's As You Like It — is a pas- 
toral idyl, where shepherds and shepherdesses utter 
high-flown sentiments, and sing madrigals and 
"pleasant eclogues" under the boughs of Arden 
forest. The very title of Sidney's Arcadia takes us 
into this land of pastoral romance, where the shepherd 
boy pipes " as though he should never be old." * Such 
works aimed less at the lifelike delineation of char- 
acter, than at the creation of a world transfigured by 
the light of a chivalric or idyllic atmosphere. Yet 
such stories, however alien to the life of our day, 
were far less removed from that of the Elizabethan. 
Then the spirit of chivalry lived, and the imagination 
was liberated and quickened by the swift advance, the 
stir and strangeness of tlie time. The Elizabethan 
romance' is the true child of the age which produced 
such works as Faustiis, As You Like It, The Tem- 
pest, The Faithful Shepherdess, and The Faerie 
Queene, 

During the seventeenth century the romance, 
insteadof advancing toward truthfulness and simplic- 
Se e t th- ^^J"' became more full of false and extrava- 
century gant heroics, and farther removed from 

romances. actual life. French romances were im- 
mensely popular, in the original, or in the translation, 
and in spite of a few attempts to stem the current, 
the general tone was pompous and inflated. Jusse- 
rand says of this period : " The hundred years 
* Arcadia, bk. i. 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 211 

which follow Shakespeare's death are, therefore, 
taken altogether, a period of little invention and 
progress for romance literature. The only new devel- 
opment it takes consists in the exaggeration of the 
heroic element, of which there was already enough 
in many an Elizabethan novel ; it consists, in fact, 
in the magnifying of a defect." * For the time, 
farther progress in the old lines of romance-writing 
became impossible. After the Restoration the rhap- 
sodies of a pseudo-chivalry became more and more 
out of keeping with the open-eyed, practical, and 
comparatively modern temper of the time. Prose 
was discarding its ponderous, or elaborately affected 
manner, and becoming plainer, more serviceable, and 
more direct. Under these conditions a new form of 
story- telling, distinguished by its skill in the delinea- 
tion of character, its simple style, free from fac- 
titious embellishments, its sharp* and clear-cut 
presentations of ordinary life, gradually took form. 
It is true that tliis kind of fiction had been partially 
anticipated at a much earlier period. As far back as 
the Elizabethan days, Thomas Nash, the forerunner 
of the realistic novelists, had introduced his readers 
to well-defined types of contemporary character. In 
Pierce Penniless^ for instance, he describes, among 
many other characteristic personages, " The prodigal 
young master " who falls in a quarreling humor with 
Fortune, because she made him not "King of the 
Indies"; he swears that " neither father nor brother 
will keep him under " ; that he will go to sea, " and 

* The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, p. 412 



212 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

teare the gold out of Spanish throats, but he will 
have it, by'r ladye." * 

Ben Jonson introduced similar character-sketches 
into his Cynthia's Mevels (1600), and in the seven- 
teenth century several books were published, consist- 
ing entirely of short character-studies, unconnected 
by any framework of narrative. Among these, one 
of the best known is the Characters of Sir Thomas 
Overbury (pub. 1614), a courtier and minor poet. 
Other " character-writers " of the time were Josepli 
Hall {Characters of Virtues and Vices, pub. 1608) 
and John Earle {Microcosmography, 1628). Thus, 
while in the tedious and drawn-out stories of the 
romance-writer, the depiction of character was com- 
monly neglected, a form of prose became popular, in 
which character was the sole interest. But these 
character-writers portrayed a type rather than an 
individual ; and the general characteristics of this 
type, or class, were exhibited merely by the dry 
enumeration of peculiarities of life, dress, or manners. 
A further step was taken toward the modern novel 
of character when Steele and Addison, in their peri- 
Tlie essav ^^'^^^ essays, depicted a type of contem- 
andthe porary life, not by a formal enumeration 
novel. Qf qualities, but througli living men and 

women shown acting and conversing in the midst of 
their daily surroundings. In the De Coverley pa- 
pers, with their fresh and faithful pictures of English 
town and country life, with their grasp of character, 
their amusing or pathetic scenes and incidents, we 
have all the elements but one of the modern novel, 
* Works of Thomas Wash, Grosart^s ed. ii. p. 39. 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTOBATION 213 

Here, indeed, is a novel held in solution. Had these 
elements been united by a regularly constructed plot, 
bringing an added interest, and binding scene to scene, 
and character to character, by a closer and more in- 
evitable sequence, we should have had a story to set 
side by side with the Vicar of Wakefield. Here and 
there, in the De Coverley essays, are persons and 
situations almost identical with those which were 
soon to find a place in the masterpieces of English 
fiction. The ingenuous comments of Sir Roger at the 
play may be compared with the provincial criticisms 
of Partridge on Mr. Garrick's Hamlet in Field- 
ing's Tom Jones, Sir Roger himself may be appro- 
priately placed beside the contrast-study of 'Squire 
Western in the same novel. If, on the other hand, we 
compare these charming sketches of Addison's with 
what has preceded them, we realize that the '^ Coun- 
try Gentleman " in Overbury's Characters is a mere 
aggregation of qualities, while Sir Roger, represent- 
ing the same class, is no type or abstraction, but a 
veritable man, whose little oddities we know and 
understand — a friend. we love and mourn for. 

Having advanced thus far, we have reached the 
very boundaries of a new development in the story- 
writer's art. But into this region Addison and 
Steele did not enter. The next great step toward 
the modern novel was left for a man whom Addison 
scorned, one of the most brilliant, indomitable, and 
enigmatical of English writers, Daniel Defoe, 



214 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

STUDY LIST 

THE HISTOBT OF THE NOVEL 

The study of fiction has already begun to hold a more 
recognized and important place in systematic literary study. 
Professor Walter Raleigh's recent book, The English Novel, 
Being a Short Sketch of Its History from tlie Earliest Times to 
the Appearance of Waverley (Scribners), is warmly recom- 
mended as interesting and helpful. Another- useful recent 
book is An Introduction to the Study of English Fiction^ 
by W. E, Simonds (Heath). In this book comparatively brief 
space is given to the history of the novel ; only about 50 pages 
being devoted to its development from the beginning to Scott, 
as compared to 283 in the *' Short Sketch '' of Professor Ra- 
leigh's. On the other hand, Professor Simonds includes some 
novelists later than Scott, American as well as English, and 
devotes separate sections to the ' ' Tendencies of To-day '' and 
"Books for Reference and Reading." Besides this, more 
than half the book is taken up with selections, beginning with 
Beowulf aad ending with Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Both 
books can be used witli advantage. For a fuller and very 
important study of the early history of the novel, v. The 
English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, by J. J. Jusserand. 
For the early period v. further ten Brink's Early English 
Literature, Brooke's Early English Literature, and Morley's 
English Writers. For general reference v. Masson's British 
Novelists and Their Styles (1859) ; B. Tuckerman's History of 
Prose Fiction; S. Lanier's The English Novel (1883) [often elo- 
quent and inspiring, but totally out of proportion as a history 
of English fiction] ; William Forsythe's Novels and Novelists of 
the Eighteenth Century. Four Years of Novel Beading; An 
Account of an Experiment in Popularizing the Study of Fac- 
tion; Edited, with an Introduction, by Bichard O. Moulton 
(Heath, 1895), differs from the preceding in being exclusively 
given up to definite suggestions for the systematic study of 
novels. It contains the record of four years' systematic study 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 215 

by a ** Classical Novel-reading Union " in a mining village in 
Northumberland, England. There are problems given in 
connection with special novels, and essays by some of the 
members of the Union. The student may also be interested 
in getting the novelists' views of the novel in W. D. Howells' 
The Art of Fiction, and F. Marion Crawford's The Novel, 
What It Is. 

DAXIEL DEFOE. 1661-1731 

Defoe's life is charged with the spirit of adventure. 
Although he was the most prolific English writer of 
the time, there are few men in all the literature more 
free from that studious seclusion which is sometimes 
the badge of the author's profession. He lived in an 
age of wily politicians, of corruj^t and shifting poli- 
tics ; an age of slanderous and scurrilous controversy 
in matters of Church and state, when the pamphlet and 
the satire were formidable weapons of war. A born 
fighter, though he fought with his pen, Defoe was 
both in and of this time ; w^e think of him as dog- 
gedly shoving his w^ay through a mob of angry ad- 
versaries, returning every stroke wdth interest. The 
spirited stories of life and adventure with which, 
toward the close of his life, he captivated his readers, 
w^ere the w^ork of a man whose own experience w^ent 
far outside the walls of a library ; a man w-ho had 
plunged into the swift currents of the life about him 
with an unconquerable zest and vigor. He had stood 
in the pillory and had been two years in Newgate ; he 
had owned a splendid mansion and kept his pleasure- 
boat and his coach. He wrote of himself : 

" No man has tasted differing fortunes more, 
And thirteen tinaes I have been rich and poor.' 



216 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Daniel Foe, or Defoe, as he afterward called him- 
self, was born, in 1661, in the parish of St. Giles, 
Cripplegate, a district of London just outside the limit 
of the old wall. Socially, his position differed from 
that of many of his great contemporaries in literature. 
By inheritance and conviction he was a Dissenter in 
religion ; by occupation he belonged to the trading, 
or merchant, class. His father, James Foe, was a 
butcher, and appears to have been well-to-do and 
respected. James Foe wished his son to enter the 
ministry, but Defoe's bent lay in other directions. 
He left school about 1675, and after some years of 
preparation, set up for himself in the hosiery busi- 
ness. Two things combined to make the young 
tradesman's life different from that led by so many 
of his class — his active interest in politics and his 
ability to write. These began very early to tell upon 
his cai-eer. We find him turning from his business 
to write political pamphlets, and taking part in the 
ill-fated rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. 
For many years business, politics, pamphleteering, 
and journalism made up the mixed interests of his 
active life. On the accession of William and Mary 
(1689) he became a strenuous supporter of the Gov- 
ernment. In 1692, perhaps because he neglected his 
business for political controversy, he failed for seven- 
teen thousand pounds. We next find him connected 
with a brick and tile manufactory at Tilbury, a little 
town on the Thames below London. This has been 
called " the most prosperous and honorable period of 
his life." He was honestly in accord with the Gov- 
ernment and an enthusiastic supporter of the King ; 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 21? 

he lived in comfort in a house near the river, com- 
posing many verses, and writing his first great politi- 
cal pamphlet, a powerful argument in defense of a 
standing army (1697), which laid the corner stone of 
his reputation. In 1701 he became yet u^j^^ rj^j^^, 
more widely known, by The True-born born Eng- 
Miglishman^ the most famous of his lisliinan." 
satirical poems. The occasion of this vigorous pro- 
duction was the growing unpopularity of the King, 
and the violent attacks which had been made upon 
him and his Dutch followers because of their foreign 
birth. Defoe confronted the storm of popular feel- 
ing with a splendid audacity, and belabored the 
whole English nation witli no light hand. He 
pointed to the mixed descent of those who claimed 
to be "true-born" Englishmen ; he enumerated the 
various foreign elements out of which the so-called 
English were composed, and showed how 

'* From a mixture of all kinds began 
That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman." 

Then, facing his public, he drove the argument home : 

" For Englishmen to boast of generation 
Cancels their knowledge and lampoons the nation. 
A true-born Englishman 's a contradiction, 
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction." 

But a change in Defoe's fortunes was at hand. 
The death of the King in 1702, to whom he had 
become personally known, was a severe 
blow to his prospects, and the following ^^iniamlll 
year involved him in serious difficulties. 
The position of the Dissenters in the State was an agi- 



218 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

tating political issue of the time, some High Church* 
men advocating extreme measures against those who 
would not conform to the Established Church. 
Defoe's contribution to the matter was an anonymous 
pamphlet. The Shortest Way with Dissenters (1702); 
ostensibly written by a violent High-Church partisan. 
Instead of arguing against intolerance, Defoe took 
the side of his opponents, and by stating their posi- 
tion in the extremest and most thorough-going 
fashion, endeavored to arouse a feeling against 
them. His '^ shortest way " with Dissenters is, to 
banish the congregations and hang the preachers. 
The result of the pamphlet was almost farcical. 
Defoe had impersonated so well that both sides took 
the tract literally. The Dissenters were furious, and 
some Churchmen delighted. Nor were matters 
mended when the truth was known. Defoe says 
the whole ^^ world flew at him like a dog with a 
broom at his tail." He was condemned by the 
authorities to stand in the pillory at Temple-bar, and 
he was imprisoned for nearly two years in Newgate. 
But imprisonment had no power to check his tireless 
activity. During this interval he wrote eighteen 
political pamphlets, and started his Review (1704) 
which marks an epoch in English journalism.* After 
his release from prison (1704) his course became less 
open and straightforward. He wrote with his usual 
rapidity, and was employed as a secret agent for the 
government. His situation was a difficult one, but 

* The Review alone is an instance of Defoe's fluency as a 
writer ; he wrote it entirely himself aiid continued it iox 
several year^. 



THE ENGLAND OE THE RESTORATION 219 

while, on the whole, he seems to have worked 
honestly for what he believed the best interests of 
his country, the methods he employed cannot always 
be commended. Such, in brief, was the general 
character of the first sixty years of Defoe's life. 
His powers liad been almost entirely devoted to 
journalism, or to controversial publications of a jour- 
nalistic character. If he had ended his work at an age 
when most men have given the world their best, he 
must have held but a minor place in literature. He 
was a hanger-on of politicians, outside the select 
coterie of great wits, a mark for the shafts of Swift 
and Pope ; even the sedate Addison spoke of him 
with contempt, yet in 1719, at sixty, he published 
Robinson Crusoe, The right man and , 
tlie right subject had wonderfully t;ome 
together, and the result was an unexpected master- 
piece. A new road thus found, Defoe's business 
instinct led him to follow up his success with a re- 
markable series of stories which made his closing 
years the most brilliant literary period of his life. 
Among these "secondary novels," as Lamb called 
them, The Memoirs of a Cavalier, The Life of Cap- 
tain Singleton, Moll Flanders, and The History of 
Colonel Jack, are perhaps the best known. They 
are vigorous, graphic, often coarse ; they introduce 
us to the life of the criminal and the outcast ; they 
abound in adventures by land and sea ; they take us 
to the unmapped interior of Africa, or to the London 
slums. As a whole, none of them is equal to their 
great forerunner, yet, with Robinson Crusoe, they 
laid the foundation of English realistic fiction. 



^20 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LTTERATtTRfi 

Defoe's fecundity, his late success in a new field, 
is sufficiently remarkable ; it would be well-nigh 

inexplicable, did we not realize that these 
istic'^spirit " ^^^i^^s are a natural, although surprising, 

outcome of his long career as journalist 
and pamphleteer. When his literary contemporaries 
charged him with lack of scholarship — although, in 
fact, he was a man of wide information — they prob- 
ably felt in him that intense journalistic spirit which 
they instinctively recognized as different from the 
scholastic pattern. A man of a new type, Defoe 
had that modernness which belongs to the man 
whose business it is to keep up with the news of the 
day ; he understood, and wrote to, his public, with a 
business man's feeling for the state of the market. 
Quick to see what was likely to attract, he furnished 
the public with highly circumstantial accounts of 
men or events of immediate public interest. In these 
sketches Defoe was quite unconsciously feeling his 
way toward the novel. Purporting to be true, they 
are often such a wonderful mixture of truth and 
invention that the line between fact and fiction is 
almost indistinguishable. The death of some public 
character — Peter the Great, Jack Sheppard the high- 
wayman, or the Rev. Daniel Williams the Presbyte- 
rian divine — became the occasion of a memoir or 
biography. A storm, an earthquake, or the hanging 
of a housebreaker gave Defoe what in modern news- 
paper slang would be termed a "good story," and 
Defoe's novels were but reporters' " stories " in an 
expanded and more purelj imaginative form. JRobin- 
son Crusoe itself was founded on the adventures of 



THE ENGLAND OP THE BESTOEATION 221 

Alexander Selkirk, an English sailor, abandoned by 
his comrades on Juan Fernandez, and, as we should 
say, " interviewed " by Defoe at Bristol. As Mr. 
Minto remarks : " From writing biographies with real 
names attached to them, it was but a short step to 
writing biographies witli fictitious names." * Defoe 
thus became the father of the realistic novel of the 
eighteenth century, by a natural development of 
his journalistic faculty. 

At the time of the publication of Hobinson Cru- 
soe Defoe was in prosperous circumstances, but dur- 
ing his closing years he was again 
involved in difficulties, the cause of 
whicli is uncertain. He died at a lodging in Moor- 
fields, London, in 1731. He was buried in the 
famous Nonconformist cemetery at Bunhill Fields, 
where John Bunyan and Isaac Watts lie also, and his 
grave is now marked by a monument erected to the 
author of Hobinson Crusoe by the children of many 
lands. 

The distinctive merits and shortcomings of Defoe 
as a novelist lie on the surface. By common agree- 
ment he is one of the greatest realists of 
fiction. Lamb declared that his fictions novelist 
possessed a " naturalness beyond that 
of any other novelist or romance- writer "; Mr. Leslie 
Steplien, putting the same thought a little differ- 
ently, says that Defoe " had the most amazing talent 

* Life, in Enghsh Men of Letters Series, p. 134. In this 
chapter the view of the origin of Defoe's novel- writing, here 
briefly given, is more fully and very admirably set forth. 



222 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

on record for telling lies." * The characteristic air of 
truth which pervades his stories is due partly to cer- 
tain literary tricks which Defoe was fond of employ- 
ing ; partly to the skill and patience with which he 
describes the smallest incidents or the most appar- 
ently trivial details of a situation ; partly to the almost 
prosaic plainness and matter-of-factness of his style. 
In telling a story he dwells with scrupulous accuracy 
on the outward facts, while the inner and unseen ex- 
periences of the spirit, the subtler, or higher emotions, 
are comparatively disregarded. In truth, while 
Defoe has an extraordinary^ invention, his imagina- 
tion is wonderful in its grasp of material and circum- 
stantial details, but comparatively weak in its hold 
on the spiritual ; there it is bound by the common- 
sense and earthly habit of the time. Yet it is this 
very limitation of Defoe's which helps to give to his 
work that tone of veracity which is his leading trait. 
He himself represented a middle- class, average man's 
way of looking at matters, and he represents life as 
it appears to the close, but by no means over-sensitive 
or penetrative observer. As Defoe stands for a vast 
majority of his countrymen, when he really identifies 
himself with one of his characters, as he does to a 
great degree with Robinson Crusoe, he necessarily 
produces a real and highly typical personage. The 
French novelist, M. Alphonse Daudet, was impressed 
with the extremely English tone of Defoe's best- 
known hero. " Even Shakespeare," he wrote, ^^ does 
not give us as perfect an idea of the English character 
as Defoe. Robinson is the typical Englishman par 
* Article on Defoe in Hours in a Library. 



THE ENGLAND 05^ THE RESTORATION 223 

excellence^ with his adventuresomeness, his taste for 
travel, his love of the sea, his piety, his commercial 
and practical instincts." And as Defoe put some- 
thing of himself, and of that great trad- » journal of 
ing, middle-class England, to which he the Plague 
belonged, into the " Mariner of York," he Year." 
put something of himself into the London tradesman 
who is made to tell the story of the Great Plague of 
1665. The Journal of the Plague Year is supposed 
to be written by a saddler who lived " without Aid- 
gate," and who remained in the city throughout the 
pestilence. As he is both tradesman and Dissenter, 
the reflections and comments that Defoe himself 
would naturally have made in the same situation, can 
be appropriately attributed to a fictitious narrator 
whose point of view is so similar. The ghastly 
Journal is a work of consummate art. The tragic 
story is told with a sober and businesslike exactness. 
We have the tabulated statistics of the deaths in the 
several parishes ; the literal text of a long " Order of 
Ihe Mayor and Aldermen — concerning the infection," 
and the cold, official records help to give to the whole 
narrative a truly awful air of reality. As the story 
progresses, we actually live through the horrors of 
the pestilence ; insensibly we grow familiar with the 
stiffling, almost deserted streets ; with the closed 
houses, marked with the red cross to show that the 
plague is there ; with the great ditches, into which 
the dead are dumped at night by the light of torches. 
We note the despair that settles on the inhabitants, 
as on dwellers in a city given over to its doom. 
Against this somber background, particular incidents 



224 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LlTEllATtJB£ 

stand out in dramatic power and distinctness ; the 
shrieking woman in Token House Yard, dashing open 
her casement and crying, " Oh, death, death, death, 
death ! " in a most inimitable tone ; the ownerless 
purse, that passers-by are afraid to touch ; the 
frenzied man, who jumps from his bed and rushes 
through the streets to plunge into the Thames. The 
masterly restraint, the slowly accumulating weight 
of horror, make this painful record a masterpiece of 
realistic art. 

In the construction of their plots, Defoe's stories 
are, as a rule, admittedly weak, but in the truth and 
power of single scenes he has seldom been surpassed. 
Profoundly interesting as a man, as a writer he holds 
a great place in the rise of English journalism, and 
is, above all, one of the great founders of our modern 
novel. 

STUDY LIST 

DANIEL DEFOE 

1, Robinson Crusoe. Journal of the PlagueYear : Edited with 
Notes and an Introduction, by Geo. R. Carpenter (Longmans* 
English Classics). This admirable edition includes a biography 
of Defoe and some valuable suggestions for teachers and 
students. An edition of the last-named book has been 
recently published by Ginn & Co., edited with introduction 
and notes by B, S. Hurlbut, and one by the American Book Com- 
pany (Eclectic English Classics). The Earlier Life and Chief 
Earlier Works of Daniel Defoe, edited by Henry Morley (Caris- 
brooke Library, 1889) contains, besides biography, '' The Essay 
on Projects," ''The True-Born Englishman," "The Short- 
est Way With Dissenters," "Hymn to the Pillory," "The 
Consolidator," and "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal." MFo 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 225 

George Saintsbury's Selections from Defoe's Minor Novels 
(Macmillan, 1892) will be found most helpful. It contains, 
after a brief introduction, well-chosen selections from Cap- 
tain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Memoirs of a Cavalier, Colonel 
Jack, and Roxana. (The account of the London street- waif's 
training in theft in Colonel Jack suggests comparison with 
Dickens' Oliver Twist. It deserves careful study.) A very 
attractive edition of Defoe's complete works has been pub- 
lished by J. M. Dent & Co. (Macmillan & Co.) in 16 vols. 

3. Biography and Criticism. The most complete life of 
Defoe is that by William Lee, 1869. (This includes a list of 
Defoe's works, 254 in number, 64 of which were added by Mr. 
Lee, while others were excluded.) Life and Times of Daniel 
Defoe by William Chad wick (1859). For shorter biographies, 
V. John Foster's Historical and Biographical Essays (1858) and 
life of Defoe by Professor Wm. Minto, English Men of Letters 
Series; i). also the essays on "Defoe's Novels," in Leslie 
Stephen's Hours in a Library, First Series, and in Mrs. 
Margaret Oliphant's (Wilson's) Historical Characters of the 
Reign of Queen Anne. Accounts of Defoe and of his place in 
the history of English fiction will be found in many of the 
works on the novel given in the Study List 9n p. 214. 



JONATHAN SWIFT. — 1667-1'745 

Jonathan Swift, the greatest of English satirists, 
is the most powerful, most inscrutable, and most 
tragic figure in the literary history of his century. 
Born in Dublin in 1667, Swift, like Goldsmith, was 
of English descent ; but the harshness and malignity 
of his disposition are in singular contrast to Gold- 
smith's buoyant and irrepressible gayety. DiflSculties 
less formidable than those through which Goldsmith's 
sweeter and healthier nature passed unharmed pro- 
voked Swift's bitter resentment. He chafed at 



226 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

poverty and rebelled against college discipline : 
dependence on what he considered his uncle's grudg- 
ing charity galled him. His deep-seated melancholy 
and misanthropy grew under the successive trials 
and disappointments of his career ; they were con- 
nected, moreover, with a constitutional malady which 
showed itself in fits of giddiness, deafness, and 
mental depression. Obliged to take refuge in Eng- 
land by the Irish disturbances which accompanied 
the Revolution of 1688, Swift became secretary to 
Sir William Temple, a retired statesman of literary 
tastes. Young, brilliant, ambitious, and fond of 
power, Swift's natural bent appears to have been 
toward politics, but he decided to enter the Church, 
and was ordained in 1695. For a man of Swift's 
temperament and ambitions, this seems to have been 
a miserable error. While, in after years. Swift per- 
formed- the public duties of his office with scrupulous 
fidelity, his hopes were centered on political prefer- 
ment, and it is a mockery to think of a man of his 
gloomy and malignant temperament as a messenger 
of peace and a healer of souls. The incongruity of 
his position seems to have impressed Swift himself, 
^or he wrote bitterly : 

** A genius in a reverend gown 
Will always keep its owner down ; 
'Tis an unnatural conjunction 
And spoils the credit of the function." 

Swift was nearly thirty before he gave proof of 
his unrivaled satiric powers. He had written and 
burned much when, in 1696 and 1697, he wrote two 




JONATHAN SWI FT 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 227 

prose works, which suddenly revealed to the full the 
vigor, the ingenuity, the ease, and robustness of the 
great satirist. These works, which were not pub- 
lished until 1704, are The Tale of a Tub 

and The Battle of the Boohs. The Tale "!,^?T,^^®^^ 

•^ . a Tub." 

of a Tub was professedly intended to 

divert the attacks of those who play " with schemes 
of religion and government." Swift declares that he 
threw his book out to them as seamen throw an 
empty tub to a whale to prevent him " from laying 
violent hands upon the ship." The book deals alle- 
gorically with the religious differences and dissen- 
sions of the time, and impliedly urges the Church of 
England to take a middle course between what 
Swift considered the superstitions of Roman Catholi- 
cism and the fanaticism of the nonconformists. Its 
deeper purpose and spirit have been variously under- 
stood. Churchmen of that day were so shocked at 
its tone that it became a hindrance to Swift's eccle- 
siastical advancement. On the other hand, a recent 
critic declares that the charges of profanity and 
irreverence which it has provoked are " natural but 
groundless." * Whatever view we adopt, we shall 
probably agree that its moving spirit is a furious 
and destructive hatred of whatever in Swift's eyes 
seemed cant and hypocrisy, and that back of the 
whole book is the joy of a great satirist in the free 
play of his terrible powers, a joy like the battle rage 
of the Berserker. The Tale of a Tub is disgusting in 
places; it handles holy things with a coarse familiarity 

* Richard Garnett's article on * ' Swift '* in Encyclopcedia 
Britannica, ninth edition. 



228 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in keeping with the materialistic and skeptical i=x)irit 

of the time, but its spontaneous wit, its force and 

brilliancy, place it in the front rank of English 

satires. In The Battle of the Books 

The Battle g^yift entered as a humorist into a current 
of the Books," 

discussion on the comparative merits of 

ancient and modern literature. This dispute, which 
began in France, was started in England by a publi- 
cation of Sir William Temple's, in which the supe- 
riority of the classic literature was upheld. In his 
essay Temple extravagantly praised an obscure 
classic {The Epistles of Phalaris)^ assuming it to be 
genuine. This assumption was conclusively dis- 
proved by Richard Bentley, one of the greatest 
scholars of the time. Swift then came to the aid of 
his patron Temple (who was thus placed in an 
embarrassing position) in The Battle of the Books, 
Circumstances having forced Swift to take the wrong 
side in the controversy, so far as the Epistles were 
concerned, he avoided argument and adopted a tone 
of mock solemnity, calculated to make the whole 
dispute appear ridiculous and pedantic. In form, 
the squib, if we may venture so to call it, is a kind 
of miniature prose epic, but written in travesty of 
the epic manner. Beginning with the rise of the 
dispute between the ancients and the moderns, it 
culminates in a Homeric battle between the cham- 
pions of the rival literatures, in which Bentley and 
Wotton, the leaders of the moderns, are transfixed 
by the same spear, as a " skillful cook '* trusses " a 
brace of woodcocks with iron skewer.'' The Battle 
of the Books sneers at the shams of pedantry ; T7i0 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 229 

Rape of the Lock at the shams of fashion. Botli 
are travesties of the heroic ; both products of an age 
of satire. 

After the death of Temple (1699), Swift was given 
a parish at Laracor, a small village about twenty 
miles from Dublin. His income was 
small, his congregation composed of 
some "half a score." Neither his temperament nor 
his abilities inclined him to settle down at thirty into 
the humble routine of a country parish. He came 
often to London, remaining there sometimes for years 
together ; he met Addison and the other great wits, 
wrote pamphlets and essays, and was drawn into the 
whirlpool of party politics. Taken into favor by the 
Tory leaders Harley and Bolingbroke, who came into 
power in 1710, Swift commanded for three years a 
consideration and influence which testify to his politi- 
cal ability, or, at the least, to his imperious power 
over men. Dr. Johnson said of him that " be pre- 
dominated over his companions with a very high 
ascendency, and probably would bear none over whom 
he could not predominate."* These years of his 
triumphs, when he carried his head high among the 
highest, are also the years in w^hich the gentler and 
more playful side of his nature is revealed in his 
Journal to Stella. This is made up of letters in the 
form of a journal, written to his pupil Hester John- 
son ("Stella"), whom he had met as a child in the 
household of Sir William Temple. Scribbled hastily, 
with no thought beyond the desire to give pleasure 
to " Stella," and the little group of friends in Ireland, 
* Johnflon'g Lives of the Poets; •' Swift." 



230 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the letters move us as no other writings of Swift do, 
to tenderness, awe, and pity. They warn us that 
even Swift had '^ two soul-sides," * and remind us 
that where we cannot understand we should be cau- 
tious how we judge. 

In 1713 Swift was rewarded by the deanery of St. 

Patrick's, Dublin ; but, in the year following, the 

downfall of the Tory Government was 

Political followed by the deaths of Harley and 
reverses. *^ ^ •' 

the Queen. Swift's political fortunes 

went down in the general wreck ; nothing remained 
but what seemed to him a life of weary exile in his 
deanery, and the bitterness of disappointment and 
disgust. " What a world is this," Bolingbroke wrote 
to him after the crash came, " and how does fortune 
banter us ! " 

The effect of this sudden plunge into comparative 
obscurity, from a place of power in the political and 
literary circles of the capital, can be readily under- 
stood. Swift wrote with morbid sadness that there 
his life was " no soul's concern," and that those 
about him would follow his hearse '^ without a tear." f 
" The best and greatest part of my life," he declared, 
" I spent in England ; there I made my friendships 
and there I left my desires." J It was during those 
years of loneliness, bitter with brooding over disap- 
pointed hopes, that Swift wrote Gidliver^s Travels^ 

* F. Browning's " One Word More." 

f Verses '' In Sickness " (1714), Sheridan's edition of Swift, 
vol. vii. p. 142. 

X Swift's Letters and Jowmals, edited by Stanley Lane* 
Poole, p. 191. 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 231 

(published 1726). Swift says in one of his letters 
that its chief purpose was to show his hatred of 
that detestable animal man ; certainly he 
poured into it that scBva i7idignatio, that m T „ 
fierce wrath at life and his brother-men, 
which had tormented him in his hours of darkness. 
But savage and terrible as the book is, it is more than 
a political satire, more even than an indictment of 
mankind; it is, at least in the earlier books, a fascinat- 
ing story ; wonderful in the originality and ingenuity 
of its conceptions and in the surprising naturalness 
which tlie skill of a great artist has given to the 
whole. The most pitiless of satires, it has also been 
well called '^ (omitting certain passages) almost the 
most delightful children's book ever written." * It 
helps us to understand this double nature of the 
book if we recall the less familiar and more human 
side of Swift himself. The charm of Gulliver'^ s 
Travels, the whimsical adventures, the little nurse 
Glumdalclitch only forty feet high, for whom we 
have a positive affection, seem closely associated with 
that playfulness which appears in the Journal to 
Stella, or, perhaps, even more nearly, with that 
delight Swift took in riddles, puzzles, and ingenious 
trifling, as a distraction from the melancholy which 
oppressed him. Gulliver's adventures among the 
pygmies and giants are, from one aspect, a mathe- 
matical puzzle, worked out with infinite pains and an 
almost mathematical exactness. Of course the book 
is far more than ingenious ; it is a masterpiece of nar- 
rative. We see in it another step in the advance of 
♦Leslie Stephen's Swift; English Men of Leitera Series. 



232 INTEODUCTIOM TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

eighteenth- century fiction ; we feel that these strange 
adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, ship's surgeon, have 
that air of careful veracity which places them with 
the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Mariner of York. 
But while, in Defoe's romance, we detect the didactic 
note of the Dissenter, in Swift's we hear the fallen 
politician railing at the pettiness of statecraft and at 
all the vaunted glory of man. Back of the satire on 
contemporary English politics, there rises a far darker 
and profounder discontent; we hear the cry of a 
strong but morbid and distorted nature, hemmed in 
by a corrupt, shallow, and unbelieving time. As we 
near the end of the book, the hatred of man grows 
more rabid and more malignant. Man's knowledge is 
foolishness ; his reason, which to Shakespeare seemed 
the attribute of a god, is held up to contempt ; his 
instincts are proclaimed brutish and vile. Pope 
imagined superior beings contemplating the dis- 
coveries ^of a Newton with a patronizing sense of 
amusement, like that with which we regard the antics 
of a monkey; the same spirit is in Swift, but so much 
the more furious and sardonic as his nature was 
stronger and more sincere.* 

Swift's life went down in loneliness and darkness. 

Esther Vanhomrigh, whose love he had slighted, 

died ; Hester Johnson, who had called 

Closing ^^^^ ^1^^ Y)est he had to give of love and 
years. , ^ 

tenderness, died also, and one of the 

strangest and most tragic of the world's love stories 

was at an end. Once he had written vindictively 

that he was doomed to die in obscurity "like a poi- 

* Mmy on Man, Epistle II. 11, 31-36, 



THE ENGLAND OF THJiJ RESTORATION 233 

soned rat in a hole," now his life drifted on helplessly 
toward a pitiable and awful close. In loneliness, in 
failing health, and in what inward and unspeakable 
anguish we can only conjecture, the shadows of insan- 
ity closed in on Swift's clear and splendid intellect, 
and he sank into a mindless apathy from which he 
seldom roused. He died in 1745. "An immense 
genius," writes Thackeray; "an awful downfall and 
ruin. So great a man he seems to me that thinking 
of him is like thinking of an empire falling." ^ 

STUDY LIST 
SWIFT 

1. Morley's Minor Writings of Swift (Carisbrooke Liurary) 
contains ''The Tale of a Tub," " The Battle of the Books/' 
part of the " Journal to Stella," selected poems, etc. Among 
these poems at least the *' Cadenus and Vanessa" and the 
** Imitation" of Horace, Satire YI. bk 11., should be care- 
fully read. Other useful collections of the selected writings 
are Stanley Lane-Poole's Selections from the Prose Writings of 
Jonathan Sicift ; Letters and Journals of Jonathan Sicift, by 
the same editor ; and Swift, Selections from His Works, Edited, 
with Life, Introduction, and Notes, by Henry Craik, 2 vols. 
The standard edition of complete works is that of Sir Walter 
Scott, 1814, with biography. There are numerous expur- 
gated editions of GulUvefs Travels. An edition for schools is 
published by Ginn & Co., and a selection, " Gulliver's Yoyage 
to Lilliput, with . . . critical opinions . . . notes, and 
review questions," is published by Maynard, Merrill & Co. 
(English Classic Series). 

2. Biography and Criticism. The Life of Jonathan 
Swift, by Henry Craik (Murray, 1882), is the standard biog- 

* English Humorists : *• Swift." 



234 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

raphy. For briefer treatment, see Leslie Stephen's Swift, in 
the English Men of Letters Series, a brilliant and admirable 
piece of work. Earlier lives are those by Dr. Johnson, in the 
Lives of the Poets ; Sir Walter Scott's, and John Foster's — the 
last named coming down only to 1711. Thackeray's lecture 
on Swift in The English Humorists is indispensable, although 
we should be cautious about committing ourselves entirely to 
his view. Some of his conclusions in regard to Stella are 
dissented from in an essay by Mrs. Oliphant (Wilson) ; His- 
torical Characters in the Beign of Queen Anne. See also W. 
E. H. Lecky's Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland ; Mas- 
son's Three Devils, and Other Essays ; and Masson's British 
Novelists (lect. ii.). 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 235 



ALEXANDER POPE. — 1688-1744 

Alexander Pope is the lawful successor to Dryden 
in the line of representative English poets. About 
this extraordinary personage centers the literary and 
social activity of the Augustan Age, with its thin 
veneer of elegance and fashion, and its inherent 
coarseness and brutality ; with its spiteful literary 
rivalries, its stratagems, its rancor, and its unmeasured 
slanders. The sturdy Dryden, robust enough to 
shoulder his way to the front by sheer force, had 
gone, and this fragile, deformed, and acutely nervous 
invalid reigned in his stead. The story of Pope's 
life is a painful one. He was weak and sickly from 
his infancy, and his life was "a long disease." He is 
said to have had a naturally sweet and gentle dis- 
position, but he grew up to be petulant and embit- 
tered. His father, a rich and retired merchant, was 
a Roman Catholic, and the prejudice against persons 
of that faith was so strong at this time that Pope was 
prevented from attending the public schools. His 
education was consequently superficial and irregular. 
He had some instruction from a Roman Catholic 
priest, and afterward went to several small schools, 
remaining a short time at each and learning but little. 
At one of these, the Roman Catholic seminary at Twy- 
ford, he began his career as a satirist by writing a lam- 
poon on the master. When Pope was about twelve 
years old he was taken from school to live with his 
father at Binfield, a straggling village in Windsor 
Forest. Here he read much poetry, but in a rambling 
and desultory fashion. He also wrote many versea 



236 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATrRE 

imitating the style of one or another of his fayorite 

poets. He made metrical translations of the classics, 

and wlien between thirteen and fifteen years of age 

composed an epic poem of four thousand lines. By 

this early and incessant practice. Pope T^as accjuiring 

that easy mastery of smooth and fluent versification 

;yhich is characteristic of his mature work. His first 

published poem. The Pastorals (1709), represents 

shepherds and shepherdesses in an im- 
'' The Pas- • r^ ^ ^ < • • r! 

torals ■* aginary G-olden Age, conversing m now- 

ing couplets, and with wit and refinement. 

Even in ttiat polite and artificial time, the unnatural- 

ness of this did not pass unnoticed, and a writer in Tlie 

Guardian held that the true pastoral should give a 

genuine picture of English country life. 

Pope's next publication, the Essay on Criticism 

(published 1711), took London by storm. It is a 

didactic poem in which the established rules of com. 

position are restated by Pope in terse, neat, and often 

clever, couplets. Poetry of this order was especially 

in accord witli the reigning literary fashions, and 

in the Essay Pope was but following the lead of 

Boileau and of Dryden. Originality was neither 

possible nor desirable in a work which undertook to 

express the settled principles of criticism, yet the 

poem possesses a merit eminently characteristic of 

Pope — it is quotable. All through it we find couplets 

in which an idea, often commonplace enough, is 

packed into so terse, striking, and remarkable a form 

that it has become firmly imbedded in our ordinary 

thought and speech. Through his power to translate 

a current thought into an almost proverbial form, 




ALEXANDER POPE 



IBE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 237 

Pope has probably enriched the language with more 
phrases than any writer save Shakespeare. 

•' A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. 

" To err is human, to forgive divine. 

" For fools rush in where angels fear to tread." * 

Such quotable bits as these are used by thousands 
who are entirely ignorant of their source. 

Pope gave a brilliant proof of the versatility of his 
powers by The Rape of the Lock (1712), the religious 
poem of The Messiah^ and Windsor Forest. 

The first of these, The Rape of the Lock, is the 
most perfect poem of its kind in the literature. It 
owes its existence to a trifling incident, the theft of 
a lock of Mistress Arabella Termor's hair, by Lord 
Petre, a gay young nobleman. The families of these 
two young people of fashion, as Pope puts it, '' took 
the matter too seriously," f and an estrangement was 
the consequence. It was suggested to Pope by a 
friend that he should write a poem that should turn 
the whole thing into a jest, and restore the offended 
parties to good humor. The airy and glittering 
structure raised by Pope on this slight foundation is 
probably his most perfect work. The second edition 
appeared in 1714, Avith a dedication to Mistress 
Fermor, whose poetical counterpart we find in 
Belinda, tlie heroine of the poem. 

*A11 these quotations will be found in the Essay on 
Criticism. 
\ Spence's Anecdotes, 



238 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATtlBE 

In it Pope constitutes bimself the poet laureate of 
the trivial ; making the graceful nothings of fashion- 
able society seem yet more triflins^ by 
The poem. ^ . ^ \ . i , i . T 

airecting to treat them with the high 

seriousness of the heroic. With mock solemnity we 
follow the fortunes of Belinda through her little 
round of idleness and pleasure. We see her luxuri- 
ously slumbering on till noon, when her lapdog. 
Shock, awakens her. We are present at the toilet, 
and watch the progress of " the sacred rites of 
pride." And through the day, with its pleasure 
party up the Thames, its cards, its tea-drinking, and 
its tragic catastrophe of the severed curl, the mighty 
import of each incident is heightened by the unseen 
presence of supernatural beings, sylphs, who assist 
unknown at tlie parting of her hair, " preserve the 
powder " of her cheeks " from too rude a gale," or 
seek to guard from threatened dangers her lapdog or 
lier locks. It has been said that Pope had a moral 
purpose in this solemn mockery ; that it is " a con- 
tinuous satire on a tinsel existence "; and that the 
central motive of the whole is to be found in the 
speech of Clarissa with its concluding couplet : 

" Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll ! 
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul." 

It is more likely that the upholders of such a view 
have fallen into the error of the respective families 
of Lord Petre and Mistress Fermor, and " taken the 
matter too seriously." In The Dunciad Pope had 
a genuine personal grievance, and the darts of his 
satire are driven home and tipped with venom. But 



THE ENGLAND OE THE RESTORATION 239 

in The Rape of the Lock there is neither personal 
wrath nor the slightest undercurrent of a moral in- 
dignation. The satire is playful, and the strokes as 
harmless as those in the contest of the lords and 
ladies, where the weapons are fans, lightning glances, 
and a pinch of snuff. 

When we yield ourselves fully to the graceful 
charm of the poem, we feel that the intrusion of 
a serious moral purpose would overweight its airy 
and irresponsible levity. But apart from artistic 
considerations, it is not likely that Pope himself 
regarded the matter from the point of view of a 
social reformer. He is amused at the brilliant follies 
he describes ; he treats them with the flippancy and 
cleverness of the man of the world ; but he has 
neither the depth of feeling, nor the belief in the 
latent capacity of the men and women he satirizes, 
to really long to make them better. For women he 
exhibits a playful and invincible contempt. They 
are inherently, and, so far as appears, hopelessly vain 
and frivolous ; their hearts are "moving toy shops"; 
their interests flirting, dressing, and shopping. How- 
ever we may delight in the wit, sparkle, and fancy of 
The Rape of the Lock — and we can hardly admire 
them too much — we should realize that not only is 
the poem so nicely balanced that its pretended seri- 
ousness never slips into real earnestness, but that if 
we insist on taking it seriously, its implied moral is 
an exceedingly bad one. For it is not only the vain 
and trifling that are satirized. The poem is largely 
a burlesque of noble and beautiful ideals, and its wit 
chiefly consists in placing the sacred or the admirable 



240 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

on a seeming equality with the trifling or the absurd. 
In this travesty of the sublime, the wrath of Achilles 
is replaced by the petulant vexation of Belinda. The 
world is reversed, and the unimportant is the only 
thing worthy of our concern. We are amused be- 
cause all ordinary standards are changed, and we 
hear in the same breath of the state counsels and the 
tea-drinking of a Queen, of the deaths of husbands 
and of lapdogs, of the neglect of prayers, and the 
loss of a masquerade. In Gulliver^ s Travels we are 
entertained by the upsetting of our conceptions of 
physical relations, we see man become a pygmy 
among giants, a giant among pygmies ; in The Rape 
of the Lock we are entertained by a similar reversal 
of our moral and spiritual ideas, and in its tolerant 
cynicism the petty becomes great, the great petty. 

From the moral aspect such wit, however enter- 
taining^ is not without its element of danger. It is a 
fact full of significance, when we stand back and 
look at the large movements in the history of Eng- 
lish literature, that the most perfect and original 
poem which early eighteenth century England pro- 
duced was the mockery of the heroic ; that in it the 
very froth of life should sparkle, crystallized forever 
into a fairy fretwork of exquisite tracery. Before 
this was Shakespeare's passion ; before this, too, the 
sightless eyes of Milton were raised to heaven, behold- 
ing the invisible. Yet it is a great thing that the 
race which gave life to Hamlet and to Paradise Lost 
should have been capable of creating also The Rape 
of the Lock. 

la Windsor Forest the woodland about Binfield is 



THE ENGLAND OE THE RESTORATION 241 

withdrawn from all danger of recognition, in accord^ 

ance with the peculiar taste of the time. 

Pan, Pomona, Flora, and Ceres, and p^j.^^ »°^ 

other classic deities are domesticated in 

an English landscape, and Queen Anne compared 

with Diana. Vulgar realities are carefully avoided, 

as when the hunter, instead of taking aim, is made to 

** Lift the tube and level with his eye." * 

The poem shows great ease and elegance, but what 
we admire in it is the artist's self-conscious and 
obtrusive skill. So elaborate is Pope's art here and 
elsewhere, that we are less occupied with what he 
says than with his practiced dexterity in saying it. 
Soon after the publication of this poem, Pope plunged 
into the midst of the fashionable society of the daJ^ 
He frequented the theaters and clubhouses, loitered 
with the gay throngs at Bath, and was entertained at 
the country places of the nobility. After living for 
two years at Chiswick on the Thames (1716-1718), 
Pope leased a villa at Twickenham, 
about five miles farther up the river. Twickenham 
Here he constructed what he called his 
" grotto " and his gardener less elegantly styled '^ the 
underground passage," the walls of which " were 
finished with shells interspersed with pieces of look- 
ing glass in angular form." f He had, too, a temple 
of shells, and delighted in ornamental gardening. 
Here, indeed, was much of that " nature to advan- 

* Windsor Forest. 

fSee Pope's letters describing the grotto, given in Car 
ruthers' Life of Pope, vol. i. pp. 171-177, Bohn's edition. 



242 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATURE 

tage dressed " in which he believed. Here he reigned, 
a center of literature and fashion, entertaining 
among the rest the poet John Gay (1688-1732) and 
the great and terrible Dean Swift (1667-1745). Mean- 
while he had worked industriously. His translation 
of the //^^(^ appeared in installments between 1715- 
1720, and that of the Odyssey was finished in 1725. 

In 1728 Pope began a new stage of his career by 
The Dundads or epic of dunces, a satire on the gen- 
eral plan of J/aci^fec^^06 against certain 

.^^f,^^^' writers and booksellers of the day. In 
spite of that cleverness which Pope 
never loses, this poem is both pitiable and disgusting. 
Obscure and starving authors are dragged from their 
garrets and their straw to be overwhelmed with un- 
savory abuse,* and while the poet employs every 
device that malignity can suggest, we miss the amaz- 
ing vigor of Dryden's giant strokes. 

Pope wrote other satires, but the most famous work 
of his later years is the Essay on Man (1732) a 
didactic poem largely based on the phi- 
Man^^^ °^ losophy of his friend. Lord Bolingbroke. 
Its purpose, like that of Paradise Lost, 
IS " to vindicate the ways of God to man,'' but the 
subject, instead of being treated imaginatively, is 
cast in a purely didactic and argumentative mold. 
The sneering contempt for humanity, so frequent in 
early eighteenth century England, runs through the 
poem, and the attempt is made to justify or explain 
the ways of Providence by the belittling and rebuk- 
ing of man. Man is but a link in an unknowable 
* See Thackeray's English Humorista,^ p. 267c 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 243 

chain of being, and because he can form no idea of 
the purpose of the whole, he should not presume to 
condemn the working of a part. 

"The proper study of mankind is man," not be- 
cause of man's dignity and greatness, but because he 
should not aspire to grasp higher things or determine 
his true relations to them. Looking at " life's poor 
play," he finds one "single comfort," 

** The' man's a fool, yet God is wise." 

The philosophy of the Essay on Man is shallow 
and antiquated, its argument often defective, yet the 
poem remains a living part of the literature by virtue 
of Pope's admirable and distinctive art. No proof 
of the enduring quality of this art could be more 
irrefutable than that the supreme power of saying 
trite things aptly, gracefully, and concisely, has suc- 
cessfully kept the Essay on Man on the surface, 
while other didactic poems of the time have long 
since sunk under the weight of prosy moralizing. 

About Pope's life but little more need be said. 
During his later years his feeble frame was shaken by 
illness, and his hours embittered by the 
fierce retaliation which The Dunciad 
naturally provoked. He died quietly in his villa May 
30, 1744, and was buried in the Twickenham church 
near the monument he had erected to his parents. 

It is almost impossible for readers and critics of 
this generation to be fair to Pope either as a poet or 
as a man. He is the spokesman of a popeandhis 
dead time, separated from ours by the time, 
most fundamental differences in its ideals of liter' 



244 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ature and of life. So absolutely is lie bound 
up with this time that we must try to enter it in 
imagination if we would understand and sympathize 
with its typical poet. The literary taste of the age 
was satisfied with correctness, grace, and finisli ; 
Pope's poetry complied with these conditions, and is 
smooth, polished, concise, and lucid. Besides this, 
Pope has given one poem to the literature as un- 
paralleled of its kind as Paradise Lost or Hamlet — • 
that airiest creation of the satiric fancy, The Rape of 
the Lock. 

As a man, our thoughts of Pope waver between 
contempt and pity. The world knows him to have 
been inordinately vain, intoxicated by applause, and 
agonizingly sensitive to criticism ; it knows him to 
have been peevish and irritable ; capable, when his 
self-love was touched, of retaliating with a fierceness 
of malice fortunately rare even in the history of 
genius. He engaged in some petty and underhand 
plots in the hope of increasing his reputation, and 
his love of intriguing was so great that, in ths 
famous phrase of Dr. Johnson, "he hardly drank 
tea without a stratagem." Yet, vindictive and spite- 
ful as he seems, Pope loved his mother with a toucli- 
ing and beautiful devotion ; cripple as he was, he 
had the heart of a soldier. In spite of the physical 
drag of life-long weakness and suffering, lie set 
before himself the high purpose of excelling in his 
chosen art, and, in a rough and brutal time, he won 
and kept the headship in English letters. In extenu- 
ation of his faults it is but just to remember that he 
lived in a geijeratioii of slander and intrigue, when 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 245 

religious belief was shaken, and noble ideals seemed 
dead. " The wicked asp of Twickenham," one of 
his many enemies called him ; but delicate, tetchy, 
morbid, is it a wonder that he should have used his 
sting ? Thinking of Pope, we cannot but pity the 
crooked and puny body ; shall we dare to fail in pity 
for the warped and crooked soul ? 

STUDY LIST 
POPE 

1. The Rape of the Lock. To what class of poetry does 
this poem belong ? For account of incident on which this 
poem was founded see article on Pope, p. 237. 

Cf. opening lines with those of the Iliad, Pope's translation, 
or Yergil, and note how Pope has burlesqued the epic. 

It is interesting to see how closely the description of the 
lady's toilet follows ''The Fine Lady's Journal " in The S-peeta- 
tor, No. 69, May, 1711. Other numbers of The Spectatoi' may 
also be read to see how the life of the time has been satirized 
in prose and poetry. 

2. The Essay on Man. In this poem man is considered in 
the abstract in his relation to the universe. What do we find 
is Pope's view of man, and how does it compare with that 
taken by poets in the latter part of his century ? Note also 
the difference between the view Pope takes of life and man 
and that taken by Carlyle, Browning, or Tennyson. 

3. Short Poems. *'Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," "The 
Dying Christian to His Soul," " The Universal Prayer." 

4. Biography and Criticism. Stephen's Life of, in 
English Men of Letters Series, Johnson's Life of, in Lives 
0f the Poets, Lowell's essay on, in My Study Windoics. For 
Bape of the Lock see Courthope and El win's edition, introduc- 
tion and notes to Rape of the Lock, and Hale's Longer English 
Poems. The Essay on Man, edited by Mark Pattison, has an 
excellent introduction, which, with the notes, will be found 



246 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

most helpful in studying this poem, Leslie Stephen's English 
Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii., contains a good 
chapter on the literature of the period. 

6. History. Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 
i. ch. 4, and Sydney's England in the Eighteenth Century are 
valuable books on the period. For state of England on acces- 
sion of Charles II., Macaulay's History of England^ vol. i. 
ch. 8. 

THE HISTORY OF THE NOVEL {cOntinUCd) 
RICHARDSON AIN^D FIELDING 

While in the hands of Defoe and Swift the novel 
had come to share in the realistic spirit of the time, 
it still remained distinctly the novel of adventure ; 
its interest resting mainly, although not entirely, 
upon the presentation of the more stirring and 
exceptional side of life. Both Defoe and Swift 
employed the autobiographical form, and in Defoe's 
work the supposed narrator was often beyond the 
pale of respectable society. 

Betw^een 1740 and 1750, a new form of fiction 

came into existence, connected with, and yet dis- 

Theno el of ^^^^^ from all that had gone before ; 

domestic this was the story of ordinary domestic 

^^^®* life and manners. To the dramatist, 

indeed, this world of every day was not unknown, 

but in appropriating it to his use the novelist was 

virtually gaining a new world for his art. Like 

most great discoveries, the thing seems obvious 

enough when once it has been done ; yet Defoe had 

thought it necessary to drag his readers into obscure 

ind unsavory places, or to transport them to the 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 24 V 

ends of the earth, overlooking the artistic possibili- 
ties of a world which lay at his feet. In a century 
and a half this new form of fiction has grown to 
astonishing proportions, until it has become one of 
the largest, if not the most important element in our 
mental life. The cause of its great and continued 
popularity is both obvious and fundamental. Tlie 
vast majority of us are interested first in ourselves, 
and second in our next-door neighbors. The domes- 
tic novel shows us our own familiar life, the life of 
average, everyday humanity, but invested with an 
added interest and dignity by its translation into 
art. 

*' For, don't you mark we're made so that we love 
First when we see them painted, things we have passed 
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see." * 

To see this world of our daily life in the pages of 
fiction, is to see ourselves and our neighbors ; to find 
our gossip and our daily newspapers given a deptli 
and meaning which we are too shallow and too con- 
ventional to perceive. The group of Avriters who 
first claimed this world for English fiction make an 
era in the history of art. 

In 1740 Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), a London 
printer, short, plump, ruddy, and prosperous, began 
this new era by tlie publication of 
R^diardson -P^^^^^^^^j ^^* Virtue Rewarded^ the story 
of a " virtuous serving maid." Richard- 
son seems a strange leader for a new movement. 
Up to this time he had done nothing in literature, 

* " Fra Lippo Lippi," R. Browning. 



248 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and the fact that this shy, demure, and highly esti- 
mable printer sliould, at the age of fifty, suddenly 
blossom into tlie novelist of sentiment, into a master 
in the intricate analysis of human passion, seems even 
more surprising than Defoe's late incursion into the 
realm of adventure. The fact is partly explained 
by Richardson's early and unconscious preparation 
for his task. In all his novels the story is told in a 
series of letters. Richardson stumbled into fiction 
throuo-h his marked facility in letter-writing", as 
Defoe passed into it from journalism by almost im- 
perceptible steps. When only a boy of thirteen, the 
future author of Pamela was intrusted by three 
young girls of his native town in Derbyshire with 
the delicate task of composing their love letters, each 
confiding in him "unknown to the others "; " all," he 
tells us. "'having a high opinion of my taciturnity." 
During his apprenticeship to a London bookseller, he 
kept up a voluminous correspondence with a gentle- 
man of cultivation who was greatly interested \w him. 
The episode of the love letters is one of especial sig- 
nificance in its bearing on his later work. Boys of 
thirteen are not usually distinguished by their warmth 
of sympathy with sentiment, but we should resist 
the natural temptation to look only at the ludicrous 
side of the situation, and see in it a proof of that 
intimate undei'standing of women which is one of 
the distinctive marks of Richardson's work. In 
Richardson there is a notable absence of that weakness 
and unreality in the women's characters, so often 
found in the best work of masculine novelists, which 
arises from an inability to appreciate the feminine 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 249 

point of view. On the contrary, the character of 

Clarissa Harlowe, in his greatest work, is admittedly a 

triumph of portraiture. Tiiere was something in 

Richardson that invited feminine confidences, and the 

creator of Clarissa Harlowe gathered around him 

from boyhood to old age an admiring circle of 

women. "As a bashful and not a forward boy," he 

writes, '^ I was an early favorite with all the young 

women of taste and reading in the neighborhood," 

and long after he was described by Dr. Johnson as 

one who " took care to be always surrounded by 

women, who listened to him implicitly and did not 

venture to contradict his opinions." 

Richardson's object in his novels was avowedly 

a moral one. Pamela was the result of a suggestion 

on the part of some of his friends that he 

should treat of the concerns of common I^icl^ardson's 

novels. 
life in a series of familiar letters, prepared 

so as to be of use to " country readers, who were 
unable to indite for themselves." He announces on 
the title page that the work is '^ Published in order 
to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion." 
Richardson's three novels, Pannela (1740), Clarissa 
Harlowe (1748), and Sir Charles Grandison (1753), 
deal respectively with life in the humbler, higher, 
and aristocratic circles. In the first two the central 
character is that of the heroine ; in the last, Richard- 
son, whose chief male characters had before this been 
despicable and unprincipled, attempts to make amends 
by manufacturing a fine gentleman, composed of all 
the virtues, and devoid of any redeeming grace of 
human weakness. An impossible aggregation of the 



250 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEKATURE 

virtues is not a character, and Richardson's hero is 
one with whom imperfect humanity cannot sympa- 
thize. Yet Grandison has come to stand so perfectly 
for a kind of buckram hero, the apotheosis of stately 
deportment, tediousness, moral platitudes, and ruffles, 
that his very name has become a useful part of our 
vocabulary. Critics agree that one of Richardson's 
greatest merits as a novelist is his profound knowl- 
edge of the human heart, and one of his greatest 
defects the length and diffuseness of his books. He 
took infinite pains to produce the effect at which he 
aimed, elaborating wath the artistic carefulness of 
a Meissonier. Reading page after page, volume 
after volume, these minute but skillful touches grad- 
ually impress us with a cumulative force. Readers 
of to-day find the eiglit large volumes of his master- 
piece too severe a demand on time and endurance, 
but the world has recognized his genius and his far- 
reaching influence on literature. 

It was the publication of Pamela that turned the 
genius of Henry Fielding (1707-1754) to the writing 
of novels, but the spirit which moved 
^®^^7 the second great novelist of this epoch 

was not the admiration of a follower, 
but the instinctive protest of a born antagonist. 
With the mild and diminutive Richardson, sentimen- 
talist, water-drinker, and vegetarian, the boisterous, 
easy-going, masculine Harry Fielding, with his big 
frame and high spirits, his keen sense of the ludi- 
crous and his healthy hatred of affectation, could 
have but little in common. Richardson subsisted on 
weak tea and feminine adulation. Fielding, accord- 



THE ENGLAND OF THE KESTOKATION 251 

ing to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, '' forgot every- 
thing when he was before a venison pasty, or over 
a flask of champagne." Yet, in spite of his debts, 
his extravagance, and the dash of the Bohemian in 
liis youth, Fielding was a sound, sterling bit of man- 
liood, of that sturdy, genuine type which we think of 
as emphatically English. Such a man was quick to 
detect a strain of false sentiment in Pamela^ which 
its author was too serious or too conventional to per- 
ceive. So The Adventures of Joseph Andreics (1742), 
a " virtuous serving man," supposed to be a brother 
of Pamela, was begun as a parody. But as the book 
grew, Fielding's interest carried him far bej'ond his 
primary intention, and the result was a great and 
original contribution to fiction. Fielding 
differed from his predecessor in literary ^^^ iterary 
form as well as in spirit ; instead of em- 
ploying either the autobiographical or the epistolary 
form, he wrote his novels in the third person ; intro- 
ducing, from time to time, introductory chapters in 
which he talks with his readers face to face. Field- 
ing's novels were intended to be a kind of comic 
prose-epic, his purpose being to show the life of 
the time, especially on its ridiculous side, with the 
breadth, but not the dignity, of the epic manner. 
He was aptly called by Byron ''the prose-Homer of 
human nature." Fielding's work is eminently natu- 
ral ; while we miss in him many of the subtler and 
finer qualities, in his grasp of fact, his manliness and 
solidity, he is manifestly the fellow-countryman of 
Chaucer, of Shakespeare, and of Browning. He 
bated cant and Pharisaism^ and his large heart was 



252 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

very tender toward womanhood and goodness. The 
creator of the simple-hearted Parson Adams, of 
Amelia, with her woman's power to love and forgive, 
had under all outward roughness a reverent and 
genuine nature. 

Boderick Random^ the earliest w^ork of Tobias 
Smollett (1721-1771), the third novelist of the epoch, 
Tobias appeared in 1748, and Tom Jones, gener- 

George ally considered Fielding's masterpiece, in 

Smollett. ^i^g y^^j, following, so that, within ten 
years from the publication of Pamela, the founda- 
tions of the new novel were securely laid. 

The realistic school of fiction thus begun continued 
uppermost until well toward the end of the century. 
But the pressure of a new spirit of romanticism^ 
which gained ground during the latter half of the 
century, showed itself at intervals, as in the publica- 
tion of ,Walpole's Castle of Otrayito, in 1764. About 
1790 the advent of medisevalism in the romances of 
Mrs. Radcliffe showed that the wave of the Gothic 
revival had invaded fiction, and from this time to the 
coming of Miss Austen, the supremacy of the romance 
was assured. 

STUDY LIST 
HI8T0BT OF THE NOVEL {continued) 

In addition to the books on the history of English fiction, 
given in Study List on p. 214, most of which include this 
period (1740- cir, 1814), the following may be used for fuller 
study : 

(a) Kichardson. Mrs. A. L. Barbauld has prefixed a 
life of Richardson, with observations on his writings, to her 



THE ENGLAND OF THE RESTORATION 253 

edition of his correspondence (6 vols.). Sir Walter Scott's 
biographical sketch, in his Lives of the Noxelists, is founded on 
the life by Mrs. Barbauld, just mentioned. Mrs. Margaret 
Oliphant's (Wilson's) Historical Sketches of the lieign of George 
II. ("The Novelist," vol. ii. 10) contains a very pleasing 
sketch of Richardson, in which we are brought close to 
him on the personal and human side. (Also in Blackwood's 
Magazine, vol. cv. p. 253.) The article on ''"Richardson's 
Novels," in Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library, First 
Series, is an excellent critical study ; v., also, " Samuel 
Richardson," by H. D. Traill in the Contem'porary Review, 
vol. xliv. p. 528. Richardson appears incidentally, *' an old 
gentleman toddling along the walk with a train of admiring 
ladies," in Thackeray's Virginians, ch2i^. xxvi.; ^., also, for 
both Richardson and Fielding, as well as for some interesting 
remarks on the novel in general, William Hazlitt's lecture 
**0n the English Novelists" in his Lectures on the English 
Comic Writers. There are references to Richardson in Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson, and Johnson's Tour of the Hebrides. 
Johnson says in the former : " Richardson hath little conversa- 
tion, except about his own works, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds 
said he was always willing to talk, and glad to have them 
introduced" (Napier's edition of Boswell, vol. iii. p. 163). 

{b) Fielding. There is a biographical sketch of Fielding in 
Sir Walter Scott's Lives of the Novelists, but the first attempt 
at a complete biographical and critical study is The Life of 
Henry Fielding ; with Notices of His Writings; His Times and 
His Contemporaries, by Frederick Lawrence (1855). This book 
was criticised by Thomas Keightley in Fraser's 3fagazin^, 
January and February, 1858. Probably the best life is that by 
Austin Dobson in tlie English Men of Letters Series. For criti- 
cal estimate of Fielding's writings, v. Thackeray's English 
Humorists: Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library, Third Series; 
George Saintsbury's Introduction to The Works of Henry 
Fielding (J. M. Dent & Co., 1893), and George Barnett Smith's 
article, ** Our First Great Novelist," first published in Mac- 
millan's Magazine, vol. xxx. p. 1, and afterward included in 
the author's Poets and Novelists, 



254 iNTHODUCTiON TO ENGLISH LlTEEATUEE 

(c) Later Novelists. References for study of some of the 
greater novelists after Fielding will be found in special 
Study Lists. As supplementary to this, the student may find 
some help from the references on p. 214. 

Biographical and critical sketches of Smollett and Sterne 
will fee found in Thackeray's English Humorists, and Sir Wal- 
ter Scott's Lives of the Novelists. There is a Life of Smollett 
hj David Hannay (with bibliography), and of Sterne by H. D. 
Traill. There is also a large Life of Sterne by Percy Fitz- 
gerald (2 vols.). 



PART IV 

THE MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD 
Since cir. 1750 



CHAPTER I 

THE BEQUOTCNa OF MODERN LITERATUEE-Cir. 1750-1830 

The history of England during the greater part of 

the eighteenth century, is the history of rapid and 

comprehensive chano-es in ahnost every ^^ 

^ . , ,.^ . , Changes m 

department of the nation's hfe — mdus- eighteenth 

trial, religious, political, social, and in- century Eng- 
tellectual. As we advance the England 
of Pope and Addison, now well-nigh as remote from 
our daily life as that of Shakespeare or Milton, 
recedes with wonderful swiftness, and through a 
rapid succession of changes we pass into the England 
of to-day. As we near the middle of the century 
the political corruption, the coldly intellectual temper, 
the studied repression and brilliant cynicism melt 
before the fervor of a rising spirituality, and new 
generations, actuated by diametrically opposite ideals 
of life, crowd forward to displace the old. This 
fresh national life utters itself in new forms of lit- 
erature, and with the rise of Modern England we 

'255 



256 INTBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

reach the beginning of a literary period surpassed 
only by that of the Elizabethans. 

We may relate many of these changes to one 
great motive cause. We have watched that mood 
of dissolute levity which immediately succeeded the 
Restoration pass into an era of comparative decency 
and frigid " good sense." Then Addison utters his 
kindly but somewhat superficial strictures on fash- 
ionable follies ; then Pope is before us, with his 
little vanities and complaisant optimism, and Swift, 
savage, morose, and terrible, is intriguing and place- 
hunting like the rest, but with the bitter inward 
protest of contempt and scorn of such a world. Now 
the nation was too inherently emotional and religious 
for such a mood to long endure ; the higher side of 
men's nature began to reassert itself ; and those 
human hopes and longings which the '^ freezing- 
reason " cannot satisfy began to stir and claim their 

due, 

** And like a man in wrath the heart 
Stood up and answered, ' I have felt.' " 

So in the drought of the desert men felt the 
gathering rush of new feelings, and as their hearts 
were again moved with pity, enthusiasm, and faith, 
they felt within them the great longing of the prodi- 
gal to arise and return. 

The new enthusiasm and faith are seen in a great 
wave of religious feeling that is associated with the 

rise of Methodism. In the midst of the 
M^th^lsm ^^^^ intellectual speculations of Boling- 

broke, and the skepticism of Hume, we 
are startled by the passionate appeal of Wlutfield.and 



THE BEGINNING OE MODERN LITER ATUBE 257 

Wesley to the conscience and the heart. By 1738 
the work of these men was fairly begun, and their 
marvelous eloquence and intense conviction struck 
deep into the souls of thousands. In \\\s Analogy of 
Religion^ Natural and Revealed^ to the Constitution 
and Voice of Nature (1736), Bishop Butler relied 
for his support of Christianity on close and definite 
reasoning, but the preaching of Whitfield made the 
tears trickle down the grimy faces of the Bristol 
colliers. This influence went far outside the ranks 
of the Methodists themselves. In the early years of 
the century, the Church of England shared in the 
prevailing coldness and unspirituality; the filling of 
its offices was tainted by political intrigue, while its 
clergy were idle and often shamefully lax in manners 
and morals. Methodism, starting within the limits 
of the Church, helped to infuse into it, and into 
society at large, a new moral and spiritual earnest- 
ness. 

The eflfects of this revival of a more spiritual life 
in the midst of a jovial, unbelieving, and often 

coarse and brutal society, are seen in the ^ 

•^ ' , , Deeper sym- 

growth of a practical charity, and in an pathy with 
increasing sense of human brotherhood ■^^^' 
and of the inherent dignity of manhood. English 
history contains few things more truly beautiful than 
the story of this awakening of tenderness and com- 
passion. The novel sense of pity became wide and 
heartfelt enough to embrace not men only, but all 
wantonly hurt and suffering creatures. Bull-baiting 
gradually fell into disfavor, and the cruel sport known 
as bull-running was finally suppressed at Tutbury in 



258 INTEODUOTION TO ENGLISH LTT^SRaTUBE 

1778. The poet Thomso!a ^^QMiinnds the labors of 
the " generous band," 

•* "Who, touche'^, with ^'uman woe, redressive searched 
Into the iHDr^ors of Ihe gloomy jail." * 

John Howard endured the noisome horrors of the 
English prisons (1775-1789) that he might lighten 
the uni^peakable sufferings of the captives, and 
Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Pitt labored for the 
abolition of slavery, f The criminal was no longer 
dragged through crowded London streets to be hanged 
at Tybu;n, a holida}^ spectacle to jeering or admiring 
throngs ; the rigors of the code which condemned 
wretches to death for a trifling theft were gradually 
softened. So, in these and countless other ways, the 
social revulsion against brutality and violence which 
marked the rise of a new England unmistakably 
declared itself. 

To some extent we may even associate this fuller 
power to feel with the rise and astonishing progress 
of modern music, the art of pure emotion, 
both in Germany and England. Handel 
settled in England in 1710. He struggled for years 
against popular neglect and misunderstanding to 
win, toward the middle of the century, conspicuous 
recognition. It is significant to contrast the fashion- 

^ The Seasons, *' Winter," 1. 358. Thomson is speaking of 
a jail committee of 1729. See this whole passage from 1. 3^2- 
388, as good instance of the new humanity in poetry. 

f Clarkson and Wilberf orce began their anti-slavery agita- 
tion about 1787, enlisting the aid of Pitt. The Emancipation 
Bill was passed in 1833. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 259 

able audiences that, lost to common decency, had 
once applauded the immoral wit of Wycherley or 
Farquhar, with that assembly, swept by a common 
wave of enthusiasm and worship, w^hich rose with 
one consent and stood through the singing of the 
" Hallelujah Chorus." * 

A comparison of England under Walpole and 
under Pitt helps us to realize the growth of the 
power of enthusiasm and imagination. 
The administration of Robert Walpole Walpoleand 
(1721-1742) was an interval of profound 
peace, during which the energies of England were 
largely given to trade and the development of her 
internal resources. Through the increase of the 
Colonial trade, and from other causes, the commer- 
cial and business side of life assumed a new impor- 
tance.! The peace left men free to devote their 
energies to money-making ; the merchant gained in 
social position, and wealth rapidly increased. J 

Walpole, the guiding spirit of this prosperous 
period, was the embodiment of its prosaic and 
mercantile character. Country-bred, shrewd, and 
narrow-minded, he had great business abilitj^, but 

* The famous chorus of praise in Handel's Messiah. The 
performance referred to was in 1743. 

f See Green's History of English People, vol. iv. pp. 126-160. 

X In the Spectator Sir Roger de Coverley stands for the lauded 
gentry, and Sir Andrew Freeport, the city merchant, for the 
rising merchant class, ^. Spectator, No. cxxvi. ; v. also Scott's 
Bob Boy for contrast between the Tory squire, who stands by 
Church Jiud King, and the new commercial magnate ; v. 
Gibbin's Industrial History of England^ p. 145, for reference Xo 
Scott's BqJ} Boy, ^tC, 



260 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was incapable of approaching life from its ideal or 
imaginative side. Openly corrupt in his political 
methods, and openly incredulous as to the possibility 
of conducting practical politics by other means, he 
laughed at appeals to man's higher nature as " school- 
boy flights," and declared that men would come out 
of their rhapsodies about patriotism, and grow wiser. 
Such traits are characteristic of the early eighteenth 
century England ; we rightly associate that low 
estimate of human nature on which Walpole habitu- 
ally acted with Pope's sneering contempt and 
Swift's fierce and appalling misanthropy. But, as we 
advance toward the middle of the century, those 
higher impulses which were manifesting themselves 
in so many different directions were at work in 
politics also. Before the fall of Walpole loftier and 
purer political ideals had already begun to take form 
in the so-jsalled Patriot party, and by 1757 William 
Pitt, the animating spirit of the new government, was 
virtually at the head of affairs. A great historian 
has observed * that Pitt did a work for politics 
similar to that which Wesley was, at the same time, 
accomplishing for religion. He believed in his coun- 
trymen, and England responded to his trust. Instead 
of debauching public morals by open corruption, he 
made his passionate appeal to patriotism. The 
_, interests of England, seemingly narrowed 

sionofEng- in Walpole's time to insular limits, ex- 
land, panded before men's eyes, as, about the 
middle of the century, the nation entered upon that 

* S. R. Gardiner, Encyclopedia Britannica, title *' Eng« 
land." 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITEBATURE 26] 

great duel with the rival power of France which was 
to raise her from an island monarchy to a world 
empire. Olive's victory at Plassey in 1757 laid the 
foundation of her supremacy in India, Wolfe's cap- 
ture of Quebec in 1759 established her dominion in 
America. Two worlds, the rich civilization of the 
ancient East, the vast and undeveloped resources of 
the new West, were almost at the same instant within 
her grasp. " We are forced," said Horace Walpole, 
"to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear 
of missing one." * Men's hearts were warm with 
a glow of patriotic pride and a sense of England's 
mighty destiny. A widening horizon, a more cos- 
mopolitan spirit, finds its way into literature. In 
Southey's Curse ofKehama we enter the world of the 
East, with its unknown gods ; in Moore's Lalla Rookh 
we journey with a marriage cavalcade through the 
Vale of Cashmere, surrounded by all the splendors of 
tlie Orient ; in Byron's Childe Harold the scenic 
background to the somber figure of the pilgrim is 
Europe itself, brought before us with a sympathetic 
breadth and truth unmatched in the history of the 
literature. 

While patriotism and imagination were thus quick- 
ened by the great part that England began to play 

in the world-wide drama of human des- ^ j .. • i 

Industrial 

tiny, at home a silent revolution was and social 
transforming the aspect of life and the changes, 
very structure of society. From the building of the 
first canal by James Brindley in 1761, new facilities 

* Quoted by Green, History of English People, vol. iv. p. 193, 
which see. 



262 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

for transportation and new methods of manufacture 

follow quickly on each other, until the agricultural 

England of old times becomes the industrial England 

of the nineteenth century, and the " workshop of the 

world." Following hard on these changes are those 

problems of labor and capital which confront our 

modern world. 

And side by side with all these new things are the 

initial steps in one of the greatest historic movements 

^, since the Renaissance, the rise of modern 
The growth . ' 

of democracy democracy. With the conviction of 

and the age human brotherhood, with the passionate 
of revolution. . ./ i? • -,. 

sense or the worth and dignity oi indi- 
vidual manhood, come the blood and violence of 
those social upheavals which usher in our modern 
world. Men are possessed with a fever for the 
" rights of man " ; they dream of a wholesale re- 
organizration of society, and the coming of an idyllic 
Golden Age ; they struggle to convert Rousseau's 
gospel of a "return to nature" into a practical 
reality. In America, a Republic is established on the 
foundations of human freedom and equality; in feudal 
France, after generations of dumb misery, the people 
lift their bowed backs from labor to wreak on their 
rulers the accumulated vengeance of centuries. The 
finest spirits of England are thrilled and exalted by 
this flood of enthusiasm for the cause of man, the 
word "liberty " sounds as a talisman in men^s earSj 
and the spirit of revolution controls and inspires the 
best productions of the literature. 

We have noted the working of new forces in 
"English society iu Wesley mi Pitt during the 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 263 

earlier half of the eighteenth century, or from about 
1740. Modern England, thus beginning 
to take shape even during the lifetime after^hT^ 
of Pope and Walpole, had a litera- death of 
ture of its own ; but the older literary °^®* 
methods and ideas by no means came to an end with 
the beginning of the new. Accordingly, after the 
rise of this new literature, or from about 1725, we 
find the literature of England flowing, as it were, in 
two separate streams. The one, marked by a mode 
or fashion of writing which began definitely with 
Dryden, may be traced from Dryden on through 
Pope, its most perfect representative, through Samuel 
Johnson, until its dissipation in the time of Words- 
worth ; the other, springing from a different source 
and of a different spirit, its purer and more natural 
music audible almost before that of Pope has fairly 
begun, flows on with gathered force and volume, and 
with deepening channel, almost to our own time. 
We have traced the first of these streams until the 
death of Pope ; we must now indicate the general 
direction of its course after that event. Many of 
the features which had characterized this Restoration 
literature in the reign of Anne were prolonged far 
into the century, and some writers modeled their 
style on Pope and Addison until toward the century's 
close. The prosaic spirit, in which intellectual force 
was warmed by no glow of passion, continued to find 
a suitable form of expression in didactic and satiric 
verse. In the protracted moralizings of Young's 
Mght Thoughts (1742-1745), and in Blair's Grave 
(1743), a shorter but somewhat similar poem, W€ 



264 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

detect a general resemblance to the Essay on Man ; 
while Henry Brooke's poem on The Universal Beauty 
(1735) and Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden 
(1791) obviously echo the favorite metrical cadence 
of Pope. In the two works last named, poetry is 
called in to expound science instead of theology or 
philosophy, but the tone is none the less didactic ; and 
it is worth noting that in The Botanic Garden the 
Rosicrucian sylphs and gnomes of The Rape of the 
Loch reappear as personifications of the elemental 
forces of nature. 

But there is something more important for us to 
notice than such single instances of the survival of 
the early literary spirit. For forty years 
jX^on ^^^^^' ^^^ death of Pope, the greatest 

personal force in English literature and 
criticism, the dominant power in the literary circles 
of London, was Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a man 
whose' sympathies lay with the literary standards 
of the earlier part of the century, and who had 
but little comprehension of the new spirit which, 
in his lifetime, was beginning to displace them. 
Johnson, the son of a poor bookseller in Lich- 
field, came up to London in 1737, with three acts 
of a play in his pocket, and the determination to 
make his way through literature. For many years 
his life was one of terrible hardship, but he bore 
his privations manfully, with unflinching courage, 
and with a beautiful tenderness toward those yet 
more unfortunate. He obtained employment on a 
periodical. The Gentleman^s Magazine^ and soon 
afterward made a great hit by his satire of London 




SAMUEL JOHNSON 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 265 

(1738), a poem which attracted the favorable notice 
of Pope. He wrote another satire, TJie Vanity of 
Human Wishes (1749), conducted The Rambler 
(March 20, 1750, to March 14, 1752), and The Idler 
(April, 1758, to April, 1760), papers similar in design 
to The Taller and The Spectator, and in 1755 pub- 
lished his English Dictionary, Shortly after the 
accession of George HI. Johnson's burdens were 
lifted by the grant of a pension of three hundred 
pounds a year. During the remainder of his life he 
ruled as the literary autocrat of London. He was 
the leading spirit in a literary club founded by him 
in 1764 in conjunction with the painter. Sir Joshua 
Reynolds. Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Fox, Gibbon, 
and Sheridan were members of this club, yet among 
such men Johnson maintained his supremacy. Ma- 
caulay says that the " verdicts pronounced by this 
conclave on new books were speedily known all over 
London, and were sufficient to sell oflf a whole edition 
in a day, or to condemn the sheet to the service of 
the trunk maker and the pastry cook."* After writ- 
ing several other prose works, Johnson died Decem- 
ber 13, 1784, full of years and honors. While John- 
son's works are now comparatively little read, he 
remains one of the most familiar and strongly marked 
personages in the literature. ^^ The old 
philosopher is still among us in the culiaritier' 
brown coat with the metal buttons and 
the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puf- 
fing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, 
tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea 
* Article on *' Johnson/* Encyclcpcedia Britannica. 



266 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in oceans. No human being who has been more 

than seventy years in the grave is so well known to 

us. And it is but just to say that our intimate 

acquaintance with what he would himself have called 

the anfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper 

serves only to strengthen our conviction that he was 

both a great and a good man."* 

While Johnson wrote some strong, quotable verse, 

he was pre-eminently a prose writer in an age of prose. 

We have seen how, durino: the greater 
Jolmson the „ . . , . . , 

prose writer P^^'t oi his centurj^, the unmspu'ed tem- 

of an age of per of the time found prose a consfenial 
prose, . J- o 

medium ; how the close adherence to fact 

found a new vehicle of expi'ession in the realistic 
novel ; but apart from this the century witnessed a 
remarkable growtli of prose — in history, theology, 
pliilosophy, political economy, and in law. During 
its middle years David Hume (1711-1776), William 
Robertson (1721-1793), and Edward Gibbon (1737- 
1794), brought the art of historical writing to a 
higher excellence than it had yet attained in England. 
Although Gibbon is the only member of this group 
whose work remains as a really lasting contribution 
to historical literature, the histories of both Rob- 
ertson and Hume had an important influence on his- 
torical writing. Gibbon, one of the great historians 
of the world, gave his life to a single mighty work, 
his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire (1776-1788), and built the massive structure 
of his masterpiece with such minute attention to 
iccuracy of detail, and such a comprehensive genius 
^ Article on " Johijson/' Encyclopedia SvitQWiCQ^ 



1?HE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 267 

for the symmetry and grandeur of the general plan, 
that his work remains unrivaled. While an era was 
thus made in historical writing, Sir William Black- 
stone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England. 
(1765), performed an unparalleled service for Eng- 
lish jurisprudence, Adam Smith, in his Wealth of 
Nations (1776), recreated the science of political 
economy, and a great political literature grew up 
under the genius of Burke. Yet in such an age 
Johnson remains a central figure. He was remotely 
connected with the development of the novel by his 
didactic story of Rasselas (1759) ; his Lives of the 
Poets (1777-1781), while by no means free from 
characteristic limitations, is probably his most lasting 
contribution to literature. Yet Johnson belonged to 
a time that was passing. His poems of London and 
The Vanity of Human Wishes follow the satiric 
style made popular by Dryden and Pope, a style 
greatly in vogue when Johnson began his literary 
career ; and are as obviously modeled after Pope in 
their versification and manner. The Mambler is as 
plainly imitated from The Tatler and The Spectator^ 
although through Johnson's ponderous, many- 
syllabled style it follows them, in the clever phrase 
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, " as a pack horse 
follows a hunter." Yet while Johnson thus stands 
as the bulwark of the old order, both by his own 
work and by his critical verdicts on that of others, all 
about him new agitations were already rife. Abso- 
lute as was his literary dictatorship, his throne was 
reared on the verge of that revolution w^hich begins 
the modern period of our literary history. The 



268 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

industrial and social England, the rise of which \v€ 
have suggested, Avas taking shape between Johnson'a 
arrival in London in 1737 and his death in 1784 ; new 
feelings utterly opposed to many of his traditions 
and prejudices, and alien to his understanding and 
haHts of thought, were quickening into life around 
him. While he held steiadily to the ancient Avays, 
those changes in literary standards had already begun 
which have led to the reversal of nearly every im- 
portant dictum uttered by this great literary law- 
giver in matters of criticism. 

The rising literature is obviously but another out- 
come of that general revolt against the earlier stand- 
Th h ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ century, to which we have 

teristics of already alluded. If we would under- 

tlie new stand it, we must read it in its due rela- 
literature, . 

tion to those deeper inward experiences 

and to those outward changes through which the 

nation was passing. It is a literature purified by 

the new love of nature, by the new sympathy for 

suffering, by the new^ spirit of democracy ; it caught 

up and relighted tlie extinguished torch of passion 

and imagination, dropped from the hand of the last 

Elizabethan. Its departure from the spirit of the 

classical school showed itself in a delight in the 

world of mediaeval chivalry, and in the ballads of 

the people which had been passed by unnoticed. In 

form it broke away from the narrow trammels of 

the favorite Augustan measure, to revive the meters 

of the Elizabethans, or to indulge in greater metrical 

freedom. The literature of the age of Anne is 

essentially slight and artificial ; born of the town it 



I 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 269 

deals largely with the surface aspects and frivolities 
of a fashionable city life. It is apt to be didactic 
rather than imaginative ; it is strong in satire and 
deficient in charity and human sympathy. But, like 
FalstaflF, men began to " babble of green fields." 
The barbarous condition of the highways, ill-made, 
neglected, and beset by " gentlemen of the road," 
had rendered traveling laborious and even dangerous, 
but the last forty years of the century saw a general 
improvement in the facilities for travel, which tended 
to break down the barriers between town and country. 
" The closer contact between town and country life, 
the revelation to a cultivated and intellectual town 
world of the majestic scenes of natural beauty, and 
the infusion of a new refinement, perception of beauty, 
and intellectual activity into country life, contributed 
largely to a memorable change which was passing 
over the English intellect."* But back of this 
increased readiness of access to nature, there la}^ 
deep-seated an impatience of the confined limits of 
the town, the stirring of instincts that impelled the 
age to seek out quiet and healing in an unspoilt and 
freer world. With an answering impulse the litera- 
ture turned from those city streets, through which in 
Trivia the muse of Gay had delighted, to regions 
untainted by artifice and fashion. So in the midst 
of the soulless literature of the town, with its close 
atmosphere, its drawing-room pettiness, its painted 
faces and its slanderous tongues, there comes to our 

* Lecky, England in tlie Eighteenth Century, vol. vi. p. 
180. The reader is referred to his account of improvements in 
roads from p. 173 to p. 184. 



270 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEKATURfi 

heated cheeks the fresh, pure air from the woods and 
fields, as poetry turns from Belinda at her toilet to 
the uncontaminated world of nature. In 1725 Allan 
Ramsay, an Edinburgh wig-maker and bookseller^ 
published his Gentle Shepherd,^ a pastoral in which 
we catch a genuine whiff of country air, and where, 
instead of the classic Damons and Daphnes which 
Pope's conventional method led him to introduce on 
English soil, we have veritable country people, plain 
Patie and Roger. Indeed, Ramsay's poem was an 
attempt to carry out the views of certain critics f 
who had attacked the artificial method of pastoral 
writing, of which Pope was then the most notable 
example, for the ingenuity of its classic allusions and 
for its want of fidelity to actual country life. About 
the same time another Scotchman, James Thomson 
(1700-1748), began the publication of The Seasons 
(1726-1730), a poem full of truthful and beautiful 
descriptions of nature and of country life, seen under 
the changing aspects of the four seasons. This work 
shows a close and sympathetic observation of nature, 
but the lack of entire simplicity and directness in its 
style tells us that poetry was not yet free from the 
conventionalities and mannerisms of the Augustan 
writers. 

From the publication of The Seasons we find a 
growing delight in nature and a further departure 

* The original version of The Gentle Shepherd was included, 
under the name of ''Patie and Roger," in a collection of 
Ramsay's poems, published 1721. 

f See the criticism in Th£ Ouardian for April 7, 1713, No. 
23. See also Life of Pope, supra, p. 208. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 271 

from the poetic maimer of Pope, in the beautiful Odes 
of William Collins (1746) and in the famous Elegy 
ill a Country Churchyard of Thomas Gray (1751). 
Nature and " the short and simple annals of tlie poor " 
are the respective themes of the Traveller (1764) and 
The Deserted Village (1770) of Oliver Goldsmith, 
while The Minstrel of James Beattie (Bk. 1, 1771) 
shows us a youthful poetic genius nourished and 
inspired by the influence of mountain, sky, and sea. 
This poetry of nature was carried forward in the 
work of George Crabbe, who possessed the power to 
bring nature before us by his truth of observation 
and his unaffected, if homely, style. A still further 
step was made in the poems of William Cowper, 
whose Task (1785) is a great advance on the work of 
Thomson in the reality and directness of its natural 
descriptions. 

And this change in the spirit of poetry was accom- 
panied by significant changes in poetic form. During 
the years when the French influence was uppermost, 
the decasyllabic couplet was employed, in longer 
poems, almost to 2he exclusion of any other form of 
verse. Dryden sought to substitute it for tlie blank 
verse of the Elizabethans ; Milton's refusal to use 
it in Paradise Lost was in such flagrant defiance 
of the critical canons of the day that sundry Avell- 
meaning admirers of the substance of that great epic 
paraphrased it in the sovereign meter to remove its 
harsh irregularity in form.* 

We find one eiplarjp.tion of the extravagant popu- 

* See article in A'^^ff,*'. Review, January 1891, ** Some Para 
phrasers of Millo!^ ' 



272 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

larity of this verse in its perfect adaptability to the 
poetic needs of the time. The heroic couplet, as 
employed by Pope, by its pauses falling with a some- 
what monotonous recurrence at the end of the line, 
lent itself to that clear, terse, and epigrammatic 
manner in which the age delighted. Instead of the 
slow evolution of the Miltonic sentence, complex in 
structure, with the '' sense variously drawn out from 
one verse " (^. e., line) " to the next," we have sent- 
ences so broken up and packed in handy packages of 
two lines each, that one can snatch up a couplet 
almost anywhere, and carry it off for quoting pur- 
poses. But from about 1726 the sovereignty of the 
heroic couplet was broken, and the reviving influence 
of the Elizabethan poets showed itself in a recurrence 
to their poetic manner. Lowell has aptly dubbed 
Pope's favorite meter, " the rocking-horse measure," 
and doubtless people began to weary of the monoto- 
nous regularity of its rise and fall. In The Seasons, 
Thomson not only turned to nature, he abandoned 
the heroic couplet for blank verse. The Spenserian 
stanza,^ which had been discarded except by a few 
obscure experimentalists, grew in favor, and was 
employed in Shenstone's Schoolmistress (1742) 
Thomson's Castle of Indolence^ Beattie's Minstrel^ 
and in a number of minor poems. Meanwhile Col 
lins' Odes marked the advent of a poet witli the fresh 
inborn lyrical impulse. By virtue of this incom 
municable, gift of song, Collins mounts above the 

*Fc Beers' English Romanticism— XVIII. Century, chap. 
iii., and the chapter on the Spenserian revival, in Phelps' 5^ 
ginning of the English Romantic Movement ; also Appendix L 
of the same book, for list of Spenserian imitators. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 273 

monotonous levels of didactic verse that stretch about 
him. Admirable poetry had been produced in Eng- 
land since the death of Milton, but its excellence 
was chiefly of a kind that could be subjected to a 
critical analysis and accounted for. The means, 
rhetorical or otherwise, employed by Dryden and 
Pope to produce a given effect are, to a great extent^ 
comprehensible to us, while we applaud the result as 
a triumph of premeditated art. But in the refined 
and gentle charm of Collins, in the subdued and 
softened beauty of his coloring, and the lingering 
and delicate grace of his lyrical movements, we 
encounter excellence of a wholly different order ; we 
are aware of an indefinable poetic quality the pres- 
ence of which, unlike the excellence of Pope, can 
only be fully recognized by the artistic sense, inas- 
much as it is, by its very nature, incapable of proof. 
Thomson wrote of nature with surprising minuteness 
and accuracy, but Collins with the inspired touch 
of a higher sympathy. Swinburne says of him : 
" Among all our English poets, he has, it seems to 
me, the closest aflanity to our great contemporary 
scliool of French landscape painters. Corot on canvas 
might have signed his Ode to Evening; Millet 
might have given us some of his graver studies, and 
left tbem, as he did, no whit the less sweet for their 
softly austere and simply tender purity." * 

In the last quarter of the century William Blake 
(1757-1827) holds an important place in the advance 
of the new school of poetry. This singular man,. 

* Critical essay in Ward's English Poets, vol. ili.. title 
^'Collins/' 



274 INTKOBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEHATURE 

richly gifted as painter as well as poet, was eccentric 
to the very verge of madness. Indeed most of his 
work seems to hover on the dubious border-land 
between insanity and reason, yet so wonderful is it 
that we are uncertain whether we should attribute 
its strangeness to the poet's wildness, or to our con- 
ventional dullness of perception. Nevertheless, in 
certain important particulars, Blake's poetry was 
strongly expressive of the tendencies of his time. 
He, too, takes up again the interrupted strain of 
the Elizabethans, recalling not merely their disused 
meter, but their gusts of passionate intensity and 
bold flights of imagination. Thus the spirited 
dramatic fragment Edward III.* is instinct with the 
lavish and vaulting energy of Marlowe, f On the 
other hand, many poems of Blake's are remarkable for 
a limpid and inspired simplicity which made him the 
predecessor of Wordsworth. In his love of children 
and of animals, in his profound sympathy with suffer- 
ing, in his lyrical beauty, and in his feeling for 
nature he represents the best tendencies of his time. 

While in literature the influence of the Elizabeth- 
ans was thus overcoming those foreign fashions which 
for a time had superseded it, on the stage 
tlie Shakes- ^^^^ greatest productions of Shakespeare 
pearian re- were being brought vividh^ home to the 
popular life and imagination. Acting, 
like literature and life, threw asi-de some of its burden 

*" Blake imitated Spenser, and in his short fragment of 
Edward III. we hear again the note of Marlowe's violent imagi- 
nation." — Brooke's Primer English Literature, p. 165. 

t According to Gilchrist this fragment was "printed Id 



THE BEGINNING OF MODEEN LITERATURE 2*75 

of stiffness and artificiality, and, after the conven- 
tional mannerisms and declamation of such actors 
as Macklin and Quin, the comparative truth and 
naturalness of Garrick took London by storm. Gar- 
rick's great London triumph dates from his perform- 
ance of Richard IIL at Drury Lane in 1741, after lie 
had won recognition in the provincial theaters. His 
influence on the popular taste may be conjectured 
from the fact that he played in no less than seven- 
teen Shakespearean parts, and produced twenty-four 
of Shakespeare's plays during his management at 
Drury Lane. Garrick retired in 1776. 

Mrs. Siddons, one of the greatest of tragic actresses, 
whose Lady Macbeth and Queen Katherine are 
among the proudest traditions of the English stage, 
wort her first success in London in 1782, her brother, 
John Kemble, appearing the following year. Through 
these mighty actors the stage fell in w^ith and helped 
forward the revolution against the taste and standards 
of the critical school. 

But while such new elements were coming into 
English life and verse, we must remember that John- 
son and others continued to follow doggedly the track 
of Pope. Tlie Seasons preceded London by thir- 
teen years, and Collins' Odes were a year earlier than 
The Vanity of Human Wishes ; yet in the poetry of 
Johnson we have but the frigidity and didacticism 
of Pope without his lightness, fancy, or grace, and 
we look in vain for Thomson's feeling for nature or 
Collins' fresh lyric note. 

1783, written 1768-1777." Gilchrist's Life of Blafce, vol I 
p. 26. 



216 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURB 

That deep feeling which, as the eighteenth century 

advanced, impelled men to turn from the artificial 

_, life of society to the world of nature was 

The new \ 

sympathy closely associated with a sympathetic 
with man. interest in the hitherto unregarded lives 
of the country-folk and the poor. The representa= 
tive writers of Queen Anne's time had despised and 
satirized humanity. We have seen Pope's low esti- 
mate of it, his malice toward men, his ingrained dis° 
belief in women; and even more bitter and terrible 
is the corrosive scorn and hatred which, as in Gulli- 
ver^s Travels, the unhappy Swift pours out upon the 
race. But in the new group of writers there breathes 
that growing tenderness for the miseries of the neg- 
lected and the poor, that sympathy for all living 
creatures, and that ever-deepening sense of the no- 
bility of man and of the reality of human brother- 
hood, which we have already noted as a motive power 
in the liistory of the time. Gray's Elegy is not 
merely a charming rural vignette, it is the poet's 
tribute to the worth of obscure and humble lives. 
The Deserted Yillage is an indignant protest against 
the wealth and luxury which encroach upon the 
simple happiness of the peasant, and in such lines as 
these we hear the voice of the new democracy : 

** 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay ; 
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade — 
A breath can make them as a breath has made-^ 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride. 
When once destroyed can never be supplied/'* 

* The J)esert6d Village, 1. 51, etCt 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 277 

Crabbe brouglit the realism of tlie earlier part of 
the century to the painting of the homely and often 
repulsive life of the country poor. In the opening 
lines of The Village he scorns the artificial pastoral 
of the older school, and declares 

"I paint the cot 
As Truth will paint it, and as Bards will not."* 

The delight in nature, the renewed religious senti- 

ment, the sympathy with man, and the love of animals, 

all find expression in the life and w^ork of Cowper. 

Not only did he declare, as in the familiar lines, that 

" God made the country and man made the town/' 

but he lived in a natural harmony with God's works, 
so that even the timid hare did not shun his footsteps 
nor the stock-dove suspend her song at his approach. 
His gentle nature rises in indignation against cruelty, 
if it be but the cruelty of the man 

** Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm," 

and the indifiference of the world to human suffering 
shocks and distresses him. Timid as he seems, he 
cries out with the voice of the on-coming democracy 
against " oppression and deceit," against slavery. 

**My ear is pained, 
My soul is sick with every day's report 
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. 
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart 
It does not feel for man." f 

This new sympathy with man and nature is 
further represented by the artist-poet William 

* The Tillage, bk. i. See the entire opening passage. 
\ Tlie Task, bk. ii. 1. 5. 



278 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Blake (1757-1827),* and by Robert Burns (1759- 
1796) until it culminates in the poets of the so- 
called Lake School, William Wordsworth (1770- 
1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), and 
Robert Southey (1774-1843). With the three wri- 
ters last named, and with Sir Walter Scott, Avho 
represents a phase of the movement of which we 
have not yet spoken, the break with the classical 
or critical school of Pope becomes complete. This 
entire movement was the expression in England of 
an impulse to abandon a too literal and subservient 
imitation of the classic writers for such an independ- 
ent expression as their own genius prompted. In 
Germany a like movement took place in the " Sturm 
und Drang " (Storm and Pressure) school of Herder 
and others (in 1770-1782), and later in tlie Romantic 
school especially distinguislied for its enthusiasm for 
the Middle Ages. A corresponding school arose in 
France during the early half of the present century, 
of which the great poet was Victor Hugo, the great 
critic Sainte-Beuve. These modern or anti-classic 
writers, whether in Germany, England, or France, 
are styled Romanticists, or writers belonging to the 
Romantic school. By Romantic, used in this tech- 
nical sense, is meant the distinctively new spirit, in 
literature or art, of tiie modern world, 
Romantic^ ^ relying mainly on itself for its sub- 
jects, its inspiration, and its rules of art, 
and denying that classic precedents are in all 
eases of binding authority, f Thus the drama of the 

* See p. 273, supra, 

f For elaborate discussion of the meaning of Romantic, u 
Phelps' Beginning of th^ English Romantic MbvenenU 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 279 

Elizabethans is often called the English Romantic 
drama, because, unlike that of the French, it dis- 
regarded certain dramatic principles of the Greeks ; 
while Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and the otlier 
writers of that group, are styled Romantic, because 
they were animated by a modern spirit, because they 
trusted to inspiration rather tlian to precedent, and 
opposed the Classic school of Pope. 

One great element of this Romantic movement, 
first in England and afterward in Germany, was a 
delight in the popular songs and ballads, a natural and 
spontaneous poetic form hitherto ignored as outside 
the bounds of literature. The English and Scottish 
ballads, simple and genuine songs coming straight 
from the hearts of the people, untinged by classic 
conventionality and unmodified by foreign standards, 
were collected in Bishop Percy's Beliques of Ancie?it 
English Poetry (I'TGo). After this many similar col- 
lections were published, and about tins time poets 
began to reproduce the ballad form. The most note- 
worthy of these early imitations are the ballads of 
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), amazing works of 
genius which their boy author pretended to have found 
among some ancient records of Bristol. The same 
tendency is shown in the Ossian of James Macpher- 
son (1762), a professed translation of some Gaelic 
epic poems, and in such simple ballads as Goldsmith's 
Hermit ^"^ Shen stone's Jemmy Daicson (1745), and 
Mickle's Mariner'' s Wife, Coleridge's Ancient Mar- 

* Goldsmith was accused of taking the idea of this ballad 
from** The Friar of Orders Gray" (Percy's Reliques) ; which 
appeared in the same year (1765). He claims to have read 



280 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

iner and Chrlstahel are a noble outcome of the old 

ballad literature, and from it also sprang the best 

poetrj^ of Walter Scott. 

When we classify and arrange all these stupendous 

changes in the external conditions of men's lives, and 

in men's mental and spiritual estimate 
Summary. .? vc , • ^ ^, 

01 liie s meaning and purpose, the great 

and peculiar place of the eighteenth century in his- 
tory begins to take shape in our minds. We see that 
it bears a relation to our modern civilization similar 
to that which the fourteenth century held to the 
Renaissance. Looked at from the external or mate- 
rial side, we are able to feel the force of Mr. Fred- 
eric Harrison's words : '^ Everyone can state for 
himself the hyperbolic contrast between the material 
condition we see to-day and the material condition 
in which society managed to live over two or three 
centuries ago, nay, ten, or twenty, or a hundred 
centuries ago. . . The last hundred years," that is, 
since about 1770 or 1780, " have seen in England the 
most sudden change in our material and external 
life that is recorded in history." * When we en- 
deavor to grasp this transition period, not only exter- 
nally, but from every side, we see that its beginning 
dates from the last years of the administration of 
Walpole, or from about 1730 or 1740. To that 
decade we have referred the rise or growth of a new 
spirit in religion, politics, literature, and even music. 

The Hermit to Bishop Percy before the publication of the 
*' Friar." 

* Essay on ''The Nineteenth Century," in The Choice of 
Books, p. 424, etc. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 281 

Its close is marked by England's entrance upon her 
long struggle with France for the prize of lialf the 
world. Between 1/55 and 1765 we place those im- 
provements in transportation and manufactures, we 
begin the ^' industrial revolution," and at the end of 
this decade Watt's utilization of steam adds its 
tremendous impetus to the movement. From 
about this time the advance toward democ- 
racy becomes more rapid and apparent. We 
enter the era of a bold opposition to authority 
in John Wilkes and the Letters of Junius; of the 
admission of reporters to the House of Commons 
and the consequent increase in the power of the 
press ; of the American and French revolutions, and 
of the outburst in literature of the revolutionary 
spirit. Finally, we may group many of these 
changes about two centers : (a) that longing for a 
more simple and natural life and the revolt against 
accepted standards which accompanied a renaissance 
of the more religious and ideal elements in society ; 
(5) that feeling of compassion for suffering, that 
sense of the worth of the individual, which we asso- 
ciate with the growth of democracy. The two 
great historic movements of the century define them- 
selves as : 

1. The expansion of England into a world power. 

2. The rise of democracy, with all those industrial 
and social changes which accompany and forward it. 

Tlie effect of these movements on literature has 
been great in the past and is likely to be enormous 
in the future. 



282 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 1V28-1774 

Goldsmith's relation to the literary and social 
movements just sketched is both interesting and 
important, yet so great is the purely human attrac- 
tion of his lif3 and character that our thoughts in- 
stinctively turn first to the man himself. There are 
few men in the annals of English literature with 
whom we have a greater sense of companionship. 
His very '' frailties," as Dr. Johnson compassionately 
called them, his heedless extravagance, his harmless 
and childlike vanity, but stir our sympathies and 
endear him to us the more. Blundering, inconse- 
quent, and pathetic as his life is, it is illuminated by 
a purity and simple goodness of nature which no 
hard experiences were able to soil or impair. Care- 
less for himself, he cared — if often impulsively and 
inconsiderately — for others. He had a wonderful 
power of loving, and Thackeray has ventured to pro- 
nounce him " the most beloved of English writers." 
To know and love Goldsmith is to strengthen our own 
love of goodness ; to increase our confidence in human 
nature; to grow more gentle and pitiful toward weak- 
ness and error. Moreover, to know Goldsmith is to 
increase our appreciation of lis works, for his works 
are but a partial expression of the man himself. 

Although his family is said to have been originally 
of English stock, Oliver Goldsmith was Irish in dispo- 
sition as well as by birth. He was born 
^? ^^, in November, 1728, at Pallas, an insignif- 

icant village in County Longford, remote 
J?om the main highways of travel, where his father, 




OLIVER GOLDSMITH 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATUBE 283 

lae Rev. Charles Goldsmith, was curate. When 
Goldsmith was about two years old, his father be- 
came rector of a parish in Westmeath, and removed 
to the village of Lissoy, in the southwestern part of 
that county. When William Howitt visited it, in 
the early half of this century, Lissoy consisted " of a 
few common cottages by the roadside, on a flat and 
by no means particularly interesting scene," * yet life 
there seems to have been sturdy, wholesome, and 
good-humored. Goldsmith looked back to its placid 
pleasures with a pathetic fondness, and memories of 
it mingled with his description of Auburn in The 
Deserted Village, 

No doubt Goldsmith grew^ up under much the 
same conditions as those of thousands of his contem- 
poraries. At school he was thought " impenetrably 
stupid," and something — which seems to have stuck 
to him through life — made him the butt of his 
companions. He was thickset and ugly, his face 
disfigured by an early attack of smallpox, and the con- 
sciousness of his personal defects doubtless increased 
the shyness and morbid sensitiveness of his disposi- 
tion. Yet his ordinary experiences, and the kindlj^ 
life of his father's simple household, gave Goldsmith 
the materials for enduring works of art. The guile- 
lessness, charity, and unworldliness, which draw our 
hearts toward Dr. Primrose in The Vicar of Wake- 
field^ were characteristic of the Goldsmith family, as 
they were of Goldsmith himself, and it is beautiful to 
think that this kindliness, which took no thought for 
the morrow, should at length have come to have it8 
* Haunts and Homes of British Poets : *' Goldsmith." 



284 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUKE 

share in the creation of some of the most perfect and 
lovable characters in the literature. In after years. 
Goldsmith's early recollections of his father were 
embodied in his description of the " preacher/' in The 
Deserted Yillage^ the man who " ran his godly race," 
^' remote from towns," " more bent to raise the 
wretched, than to rise "; they entered into his sketch 
of " The Man in Black " in The Giti?xn of the World, 
and above all, they found a yet fuller expression in 
The Vicar of Wakefield,^ 

At seventeen Goldsmith entered Trinity College, 
Dublin, as a "sizar," or free scholar. At this time 
the " sizars " were virtually part student, part servant, 
and Goldsmith suffered many humiliations which 
his sensitive nature found it hard to endure. Here 
he was idle and fond of pleasure, and spent much 
time in playing on the flute. After his graduation 
in 1749 he returned to the countr;;^ to wander in easy 
aimlessness from the bouse ot one relative to another, 
while his family were debating what was to be done 

Edinburffli ^^^^^ ^^^' ^^ 1752, one of his relatives 
and tlie having declared that he would " make a 
Continent. ^^^^ medical man," he left for Edin- 
burgh to study medicine. Becoming restless, after 
about eighteen months, he embarked for a tour on 
the Continent, with the ostensible purpose of con- 
tinuing his studies. Here he led a wandering life, 
learning little medicine, but gaining that knowledge 

^Gf.y also, the character of Honey wood in The Oood^ 
natured Man. As an instance of the impression left by early 
recollections see Goldsmith's tribute to his brother Henry in 
The Traveller, 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 285 

of European countries which he was to make use of 
in The Th^aveller, When he left Lejden he wandered 
with liis flute througli the country districts of Flan- 
ders, France, and Switzerland, playing " merry 
tunes " that often set the peasants dancing and 
gained him food and lodging. In Italy, where the 
musical taste seems to have been too exacting for his 
powers, he is supposed, like the wandering scholars 
of the Middle Ages, to have gained a dinner and 
a bed by disputing on questions of philosophy at the 
universities and convents. After a year of this 
strolling life he landed in England in 1756, witli no 
prospects and with a few half-pence in his pocket. 

On arriving in London Goldsmith was face to face 
with the problem of keeping himself alive. He is 
supposed to have been usher in a school ; 
he was an apothecary's assistant, but ^^Jf^^^^^^^ ^^ 
gave up the place to invest in a second- 
hand velvet coat and set up as a medical practitioner. 
At last, driven b}^ his necessities, he became a book- 
seller's drudge. He labored anonymously at what- 
ever task was set him until, in 1759, he published 
under his own name his Enquiry into the State of 
Polite Learning in Europe. From this time until 
his death Goldsmith's life was chiefly given up to 
task-work for the publishers, interspersed with those 
masterpieces which are the more spontaneous utter- 
ances of his genius. In spite of his desultory edu- 
cation and lack of exact learning, he had great 
qualifications for success ; a varied experience, fine 
powers of observation, a sympathetic nature, and 
above all, a style of extraordinary ease and charm. 



286 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

He did foolish things, but often wrote wise ones, 
showing on paper, as in many places in The Citizen 
of the Worlds a breadth and justness of thought 
with which he is not always credited. After the 
publication of the Enquiry his fortunes gradually 
improved. .In 1761 he made the acquaintance of 
Dr. Johnson, who became his literary friend and 
helper. The appearance in 1760 of The Citizen of 
the World added to his reputation, which was still 
further increased by the publication of his first im- 
portant poem, The Traveller^ in 1764. He was taken 
into the exclusive literary circles, and, with Johnson, 
Reynolds, and Burke, was one of the original mem- 
bers of the Literary Club. As his expenses continu- 
ally outran his earnings, his writing consisted largely 
of work done to order. He was neither a historian 
nor a naturalist, yet he wrote histories of Rome, 
Greece,, and England, which won great popularity, 
and a book on Natural History. The secret of the 
success of these works was their charm and attract- 
iveness of style. His epitaph in Westminster Abbey 
declares that he touched nothing he did not adorn. 
" He is now writing a Natural History," said Johnson, 
" and he will make it as agreeable as a Persian tale." 
Yet it is on work of another class that his reputation 
really rests. From time to time lie turned from his 
drudgery to add a classic to literature — his idyllic 
Vicar of Wakefield (1766), The Good-natured Man 
(1768), The Deserted Village (1770), and She Stoops 
to Conquer (1773). These works brought him fame, 
but he was continually worried by money difficulties, 
and toward the last the strain told even on his easy« 



:.THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 28? 

going and buoyant temperament. In the midst of 
the worries, gayeties, and honors of his life in 
London, Goldsmith's thoughts would go back long- 
ingly to the peaceful and sheltered obscurity of his 
early village life. Such feelings seem to have 
prompted many passages in The Deserted Village, 
In fair Auburn he sees Lissoy again as through 
a golden mist of distance, and he confides to us 
his desire to return after all his wanderings and his 
" long vexations " and " die at home at last." His 
life was to have no such peaceful close ; his ^' vexa- 
tions " only thickened about him toward the last. 
Overwhelmed by debts, worried by creditors, strug- 
gling to the last to free himself of his burdens by his 
pen, he was seized at forty-six with illness. His last 
words were an admission that his mind was not at 
rest. He died in April, 1774, owing two thousand 
pounds — a big bill at his tailor's among the rest ; but 
let us remember, too, that, when he lay dying, the 
staircase leading to his room was filled with poor 
outcasts whom he had befriended. 

When we reflect upon the erratic and ill-ordered 
character of Goldsmith's life, and upon the amount 
of hackwork that he was forced to do to 
pay for his luxuries or quiet the de- ^Q^k^^^^''' 
mands of importunate creditors, we are 
astonished at the high excellence he actually attained 
in many departments of literature. He takes high 
rank among the essayists of his century; he gave 
us two of the most charming poems written in Eng- 
land in his generation ; he infused into the novel a 
new sweetness and purity, producing in The Vicar 



288 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of Wakefield a kind of prose-pastoral which Carlyle 
pronounced "the best of all modern idyls"; and 
finally, in his two comedies, Tlie Good-natured 
Man and She Stoops to Conquer, he not only made 
a lasting contribution to literature, but led a reaction 
against a less natural and more sentimental school of 
comedy and helped to make a new era in the history 
of the English drama. This wide range of Gold- 
smith's best work connects him closely with many of 
the most important literary movements which were 
going on about him. When he entered upon his 
work, England had already begun to escape from 
the ascendency of Pope, and evidences of that wide- 
spread national change which has been before de- 
scribed, were yearly increasing. Yet during the 
fifteen years of Goldsmith's literary activity, from 
1759 to 1774, his friend Johnson, who stood upon the 
ancient ways, was the literary autocrat of London. 
The work of Goldsmith stands midway between the 

„. , . writers of the new school and of the old, 
His place m ... 

literary his- belonging wholly to neither, sharing in 

^^^^' the qualities of both, and, in some cases, 

admirably illustrating the transition from the one to 
the other. Thus in The Bee, a series of short essays 
which originally appeared in periodical form, he is 
one of the many followers of Addison and Steele. In 
The Citizen of the World, supposed to be the corre- 
spondence between a Chinese philosopher on a visit 
to England and his friend at home, the divergence 
from the Spectator slightly widens. Finally, in The 
Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith leaves the essay for 
the novel and thus exemplifies a transition which was 



THE BEGINNING OP MODERN LITERATURE 28S 

an important feature in the literary history of his 
century.* The Vicar of Wakefield lies close to the 
new rural spirit of its time, and may be « _,, ... 
appropriately contrasted with The Raj)e ofWake- 
of the Lock. It is of the country, as ^®^^* "' 
Pope's masterpiece is of the town. Goldsmith 
preaches virtue, simplicity, and contentment ; Pope 
displays the world of fashion, extravagance, and arti- 
fice. In Goldsmith's story the air is fresh and whole- 
some ; the misanthropy of Pope and Swift is left 
behind, and, as Walter Scott declared, " we bless the 
memory of an author who contrives so well to 
reconcile us to human nature." In their spirit Gold- 
smith's two most famous poems, The Traveller and 
The Deserted Village, are close to the new literary 
and social England, but in form they continue the 
heroic couplet of the older school. The fact is sig- 
nificant of Goldsmith's general relation to the history 
of English poetry; he filled the old bottles with new 
wine. The Traveller, indeed, retains some of the 
didactic flavor of the older school, but it sets us in the 
midst of a wide expanse of nature, it looks down on 
the nations from the mountain-peak, and bids us real- 
ize that the inequalities in the lot of man are less great 
than we suppose. The poem shows that cosmopoli- 
tan temper, rare in the insular English, which is 
remarkable in The Citizen of the World, 

In The Deserted Village the new spirit is yet more 

apparent. We are in a world that Pope knew not, 

or else cared not to depict ; the little contracted world 

of the village, where life, if narrow, is simple, nat 

* See p. 213, supra. 



290 mrnopucTioN to English LiTERATtJEE 

ural, and happy. There the preacher and the school* 
master fill a large place ; there too are those roUick- 
''Th D ^"^ country sports, in which Goldsmith 

sertedVil- himself once loved to share. The pic- 
iage." ^^YQ jj^^j ^g partly an ideal one, yet the 

description is full of details, suggested by actual 
experiences, which give to the whole an astonishing 
solidity and reality. There may not have been such 
a village in the British Isles, but Auburn exists for 
us in the world of art. In Li' Allegro^ Milton invested 
rural England with a softened and poetic charm. 
Herrick gave us a glimpse of Yuletide frolics, and 
of merry countryfolk among the hawthorn hedge- 
rows of May Day ; but Goldsmith's Auburn is more 
than a beautiful idyllic fancy ; it is a deliberate 
protest against the oppression of the poor, against 
luxury and the evils which follow in its train.* 
Although Goldsmith's life was hardly in accordance 
^vith his doctrine ; although he loved to trick out his 
homely person with finery, — too often, alas ! unpaid 
lOr, — he seems to have had at heart a longing for 
that " plain living " that Wordsworth was not to 
preach, merely, bat to practice. Two things were 
mingled in his life as in his art ; he is a follower of 
the earlier England, yet belongs by nature to that 
newer England that was near at hand. His place in 
literature is not the highest, but it is secure. He 
did not compete for the greatest prizes, but what 
he attempted he accomplished, and the things that 
he did best could hardly be done better. His ideals 
are sweet and wholesome ; his humor gracious and 
* Cf. what is said of these two poems on p. 271, suiyra. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODEKN LITERATURE 291 

free from malice ; his work full of ease and natural- 
ness, and pervaded by an indefinable and enduring 
grace and charm. 



STUDY LIST 
GOLDSMITH 

1. The latest and fullest collection of Goldsmith's poetical 
works is by J. W. M. Gibbs, Bell's edition, 5 vols. (1884-1886). 

The Vicar of Wakefield, edited v^ith introduction and notes 
bj Mary A. Jordan (Longmans' English Classics) ; the above 
is also in an edition of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , with short 
introduction on Goldsmith's literary style. 

The Deserted Village and The Traveller; Rolfe's edition 
(Harpers') with admirable introduction and notes. 

She Stoops to Conquer; a cheap school edition is published by 
The Cassell Publishing Co. 

2. Biography and Ceiticism. —Prior's Life of Goldsmith is 
full and reliable; but a later Life by J. Forster has largely taken 
its place, and is generally recognized as the standard biography. 
De Quincey has reviewed the first edition of Forster's Life 
(Masson's De Quincey, vol. iv.). This article is largely occupied 
with an interesting discussion of the position of the author and 
the state of society in Goldsmith's time. The Life by Washing- 
ton Irving is rendered fascinating by the ease and charm of the 
author's style. Life by Sir Walter Scott in Lives of the Novel- 
ists. The best brief Life is that by Austin Dobson in Great 
Writers Series (this includes bibliography.) There is also a Life 
by William Black in English Men of Letters Series. The En- 
cyclopcBdia Britannica, ninth edition, contains Macaulay's 
** Essay on Goldsmith"; see, also," Goldsmith," in Thackeray's 
English Humorists ; article in Literary Anecdotes, by Nichols, 
vol iii. ; and Haunts and Homes of British Poets, by Howitt. 



292 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 
EDMUND BURKE. — 1729-1797 

Five years before Goldsmith settled in London 
after his wanderings on the Continent, another young 

Irishman, Edmund Burke, had come to 
GoM ^ ^th ^^^^ capital, to begin there an even more 

memorable career. It is interesting to 
study the lives of these two men together, for, while 
in many ways they were widely different, Burke's 
broad relation to the political movements of the time 
is similar to that which Goldsmith holds toward its 
literary history. Like Goldsmith, Burke represents 
a time of transition, belonging both to the old order 
and to the new. More than he realized, he helped 
forward the political changes which marked his time, 
yet one of his strongest feelings was his reverence 
for the past. 

Edmund Burke was the son of a Dublin attorney, 
and was born in that city in 1729. He entered 

Trinity College, Dublin, at fourteen, two 

years before Goldsmith, who was, it will 
be remembered, about a year his senior. In 1750, 
after taking his bachelor's degree, Burke came up to 
London and began the study of the law. He after- 
ward expressed great respect for the law as a science 
and means of mental discipline, but from his boyliood 
he had showed a fondness for literature, writing 
verses at college, and being pursued with what he 
called the furor poeticus. His interest in literary 
matters, when legal studies were supposed to be his 
first object, so displeased his father, who was high- 
tempered and bent on seeing his son a barrister, that 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 293 

he cut oflF, or greatly reduced, Burke's allowance. 
Thus in or about 1755, the year before Goldsmith 
began his battle with London, Burke was left to push 
his own way in a city which was none too kindly a 
nurse to straggling authors. We know little of the 
details, for Burke maintained a dignified reserve in 
regard to his early struggles, but we know the diffi- 
culties and the results. "I was not," he said after- 
ward, "... swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into 
a legislator. Nitor in adverswn is the motto for a 
man like me." 

Burke's career as an author began in 1756 with 
the publication of a cleverly written essay, A Vindi- 
catio7i of Natural Society, followed in 
the same year by A Philosophical In- ^^2t\^^ 
quiry into the Origin of our Ideas of 
the Sublime and Beautiful. The first purports to be 
a posthumous publication of Pope's friend, Lord 
Bolingbroke, and is a skillful imitation of Boling- 
broke's manner. The arguments its supposed author 
had advanced against revealed religion are here 
employed against the organization of society, with 
the intention of showing that as they are obviously 
unsound in the political sphere, they are equally so 
in the religious. Both of these works show promise, 
but neither is among Burke's greatest efforts. 

Launched into authorship, Burke naturally began 
to take his place in the literary life about 
him. He met Johnson and his followers, n^^^^^iif-^ 
and when the Literary Club was started, 
in 1764, was one of its founders.* Meanwhile his 
studies were turning from purely literary and artistic 
*F. p- 279, Supra. 



294 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

matters to history and the existing problems of 
society and government. The changed direction of 
his thoughts is shown by the publication of a work 
on the settlement of America, and of an Annual 
Hegister of the most important public events of each 
year (1759-1788). Such work was an admirable 
preparation for a successful Parliamentary career. 
In 1765 Burke definitely entered politics by becoming 
secretary to Lord Rockingham, who had just suc- 
ceeded Grenville as Prime Minister. The difficulty 
with the American Colonies was one of the gravest 
questions the new ministry had to face, and Burke, 
who had obtained a seat in the House of Commons 
(1765), won immediate distinction by a speech on the 
repeal of the Stamp Act. It was the beginning of a 
long and impressive public career, extending over 
nearly thirty 3^ears. It was a period to call out the 
full powers of an orator, the wisest judgment of 
a statesman. The people were restive under the 
arbitrary rule of George III., and the contest over 
the right of Wilkes to a seat in Parliament showed 
that Parliament itself was rather an instrument 
of tyranny than a safeguard of liberty. In these 
years India was won, America was lost ; Warren 
Hastings was impeached for misgovernment of India 
in one of the most imposing and dramatic trials in 
English annals ; the French Revolution was begun, 
and Europe witnessed the Reign of Terror. On 
nearly every one of these subjects Burke has given 
us a masterpiece. The troubled times of John 
Wilkes were the occasion of his Thoughts on the 
Present Discontents (1770), a restrained and well-rea- 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 296 

soned discussion of the dangers which then threat- 
ened English liberty. It warns men that arbitrary 
power may disguise itself under the very <« Thoughts cr» 
forms of free government, and that the Present 
a Parliament which has become the ^discontents.'' 
servant of the king instead of the representative of 
the people, is, in fact, an instrument of servitude. 
The clear perception of the truth that liberty lies 
deeper than laws and institutions is characteristic of 
Burke's power to strip off the formal and conven- 
tional, and lay hold of the vital truth. The dispute 
with America called forth three of 

Burke's best speeches, in which he w^as Speeches on 

^ ' America, 

one of the greatest supporters of the Col- 
onists. In his Speech on Conciliation with America^ 
perhaps tho finest of the three, he brushes away the 
legal question of the right of England to tax the 
Colonies, and rests the argument on the broader 
ground of expediency and common sense. The legal 
right to do a certain thing does not prove that the 
thing should be done. " The question with me is 
not whetljer you have a right to render your people 
miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make 
them happy."* 

An English statesman and critic goes so far as to 
say that these speeches of Burke on American affairs 
" are almost the one monument of the struggle on 
which a lover of English greatness can look with 
pride." f Burke's advocacy of liberty in the rising 

* Conciliation with America; Burke's works. 
f John Morley ; article on Burke in Encyclopcedia Britarv 
nica, ninth edition- 



296 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

colonies of the West was followed by his champion- 
ship of justice and humanity in the newly-won depen- 
dency of India. In the trial of Warren 
H t'liffs Hastings before the House of Lords, the 
burden of the impeachment rested mainly 
on Burke. He declared that " the cause of Asia " 
was " being tried in the presence of Europe "; and 
there is a breadth and largeness in his treatment 
which lifts us to the height of that great argument. 
We feel that it is even more than the cause of Asia ; 
it is the cause of that new humanity which was 
growing stronger in the England of Burke's time. 
These distant Orientals, whose wrongs and sufferings 
had been unknown or unregarded, were thus brought 
into the range of the nation's imagination and sym- 
pathy. They too were men, with men's rights, and 
Burke impeached Hastings in the name of the " eter- 
nal laws of justice which he had violated," and " of 
human nature itself." * 

On these three great occasions Burke was on the 
side of liberty and justice ; but with a genuine devo- 
tion to what he called '' a well-regulated 

Srvlthm ^' l^^^^'^y?" ^^ ^'^s by nature a conservative, 
with an innate veneration for the British 
Constitution and a love and reverence for the past. 
John Morley has said that Burke believed in 
government for the people, but not by the people. 
The overthrow of social order by the revolution in 
France, its violence, its abstract, and, as he thought, 
visionary doctrine of human rights, shocked and 
alarmed him, and at the outbreak of the Bevolution, 
* Opening speech, fourth day. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 297 

he threw the full force of liis vast powers into 
a book — Reflections on the Revolution in France 
(1790) — which remains as one of the literary monu- 
ments of the time. While Burke could not see far 
enough to discern the ultimate outcome of the Revo- 
lution, he detected, as many enthusiasts about him 
failed to do, the signs of weakness and disaster, and 
foretold that failure which, to him, was its only 
apparent consequence. " Believe me, sir," he wrote, 
" those who attempt to level never equalize." He 
looked back upon the cherished ideals and institu- 
tions of historic Europe, and felt that their very 
existence was hanging in the balance. " People," 
he declared, ^^ will not look forward to posterity 
who never look back to their ancestors." In the 
insults offered to the beautiful and unhappy Marie 
Antoinette he saw the signal of the death of chiv- 
alry. " The age of chivalry is gone. That of soph- 
isters, economists, and calculators has succeeded ; 
and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever," * 

The conclusion of the trial of Hastings in 1794 
was followed by Burke's retirement from Parliament. 
In the same year he was prostrated by the death of 
his son, a blow from which he never fully recovered. 
His grief utters itself in Avords that read like the 
lament of David over Absalom. " The storm has 
gone over me. . . I am alone. . . I have none 
to meet my enemies in the gate. . . They who 
ouorht to have succeeded me are srone before me." 
Burke's health was broken, but in his Letters on 

* For all these passages v. Burke's Reflections on tTie French 
Revolution. 



298 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

a Regicide Peace (1796-1797), written almost in the 
presence of death, he declaimed with impassioned 
and almost frantic energy against any truce with 
France, which he called a " pretended republic of 
murderers, robbers, and atheists." He solemnly de- 
clared that his words, though they might have the 
weakness, had at least the sincerity of a dying 
declaration. He died soon after, at his country- 
place at Beaconsfield, July 9, 1797. 

The fame of the man of letters and that of the 
Burke as a statesman, the orator, or even the politi- 
man of cal writer, are usually entirely distinct, 

letters. Even a great w^riter's permanent place 

in literature is seldom based on his contributions to 
contemporary politics, however effective and popular 
they may have been at the time. To this Burke is 
a singular exception. Nearly all his works are polit- 
ical, while his few contributions to other subjects 
have made no material addition to his fame. He is, 
perhaps, the only great English statesman who is 
recognized as a great author because of the perma- 
nent value and literary interest of his political writ- 
ings and speeches alone. To some degree this 
striking fact may be due to the historic importance 
and the dramatic interest of many of the subjects 
with which Burke's genius was engaged. It is due, 
moreover, to the fact that Burke brought to the dis- 
cussion of these subjects distinctly literary gifts and 
a feeling for style which made him one of the great 
masters of English prose. He was capable of re- 
strained, lucid, and dispassionate argument and 
exposition, as in the Thoughts on the Present Discon^ 



THE BEGINNING OE MODERN LITEBaTUEE 299 

tents, and of gorgeous descriptions or passionate 
outbursts of pathos or denunciation. The majestic 
flow of his eloquence, with its full, rounded sen- 
tences, gives to some of his orations an epic volume 
and grandeur. In this, and in the beauty and 
variety of his historical and literary allusions, Burke 
seems, in his loftiest moods, a prose Milton. The 
tribute to Marie Antoinette,* the description of 
the destruction of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali ; f 
the picture of the ambassadors of Europe waiting 
to present their suit for peace to the " bloody 
ruffian Carnot "; J such passages are celebrated in the 
history of English prose style. But beyond all this, 
the endurino- fiber in Burke's writinos lies in their 
philosophic thought. In his treatment 
of current politics he is not merely the ^^i^ker^^^^ 
orator, the poet, the master of style ; he 
is pre-eminently the thinker, able to rise above 
purely contemporary interests. He was the reverse 
of a political theorist, but he combined with a quick 
eye for the immediate and practical exigencies of 
a situation a profound insight into the principles on 
which the foundations of society rest. His works 
are rich in a political wisdom, in maxims and ob- 
servations that reach far beyond the particular exist- 
ing conditions which called them forth. Particular 
cases are viewed in the light of some general truths, 
and become illustrations of those secret forces which 
produce and sustain the social order. Hence Burke 

* Reflections on the French Bevolution. 
f Speech on tJie Nabob of Arcot's Debts. 
X Letters on a Regicide Peace, I. 



300 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

has been called the greatest thinker, with the single 
exception of Bacon, " who has ever devoted himself 
to the practice of English politics." * 



STUDY LIST 
EDMUND BUBKE 

1. A convenient edition of Burke's Select Works, with intro- 
duction and notes by E. J. Payne (3 vols.), will be found in 
the Clarendon Press Series. This edition contains : vol. i. 
" Thoughts on the Present Discontents \" " Speech on Amer- 
ican Taxation;" ** On Conciliation with America." vol. ii. 
** Reflections on the French Revolution." vol. iii. ** Letters on 
a Regicide Peace." Certain speeches of Burke's, e. g., those 
on America, have been frequently published separately for 
school or college use. 

2. Biography and Criticism. Prior's Life of Burke (2 
vols., Bohn's British Classics) is considered the best of the 
longer lives. John Morley's Burke, English Men of Letters 
Series, is admirable and suggestive, as also is his Burke, an 
Historical Study, which enters more fully into Burke's political 
position. Buckle's History of Civilization in Europe con- 
tains interesting references to Burke ; Leslie Stephen's History 
of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century {y 61. ii. 223-242). 



ROBERT BURNS. — -1759-1796 

The soul of the New England, its moving tender- 
ness, its breadth of charity, its deepening notes of 
lyric passion, throb in the songs of the Scotch plow- 
man, Robert Burns. The lives and struggles of the 

* Buckle's History of Civilization in Europe, chap. vii. 



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ROBERT BURNS 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 301 

mass of men that toiled and died about him were 
utterly outside the range of Pope's narrow sympa- 
thies and understanding ; his genius lights up for us 
only that fashionable, frivolous, or literary world in 
which he moved, leaving all without in darkness. 
The scholarly Gray had written of the poor with 
refinement and taste, surrounding them with a cer- 
tain poetic halo ; but Burns spoke not about, but for 
them^ by his birthright and heritage of poverty and 
labor. The young democracy hurrying on the day 
through the labors of Brindley, the mechanic ; Har- 
graves, the poor weaver, or Watt, the mathematical 
instrument maker's apprentice, finds its poet-prophet 
in a fanner's boy of the Scotch lowlands. The 
natural music, the irresistible melody of Burns' 
songs, was learned not from the principles of literary 
lawgivers, but from the songs of the people. In 
their captivating lilt^ their rich humor, their note of 
elemental passion, is revealed the soul of the peasant 
class. '^ Poetry," wrote the great poet who preached 
a little later the superiority of inspiration to artifice, 
" poetry comes from the heart and goes to tlie 
heart."* This is eminently true of the poetry of 
Burns, whose best songs have that heartfelt and 
broadly human quality which penetrates where more 
cultured verse fails to enter, and which outlasts the 
most elaborate productions of a less instinctive art. 
Burns himself assures us : 

** The Muse, nae Poet everfand her, 
Till by himser he learned to wander, 

* William Wordsworth. 



302 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

Adown some trotting burn's meander, 

An' no think lang : 
O sweet, to stray an' pensive ponder 

A heart-felt sang." * 

Born out of his own experience. Burns' poems are 
racy of the soil, as frankly local in subject as in dia- 
lect. He is not ashamed to paint the homely and 
everyday aspects of the life about him, and he does 
this with a boldness and freedom which mark genius 
of an independent and original power. " The rough 
scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any 
Arcadian illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in 
the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still 
lovely to him . . . and thus over the lowest prov- 
inces of man's existence he pours the glory of his 
own soul." f The family group, after their week of 
toil, gathered in patriarchal simplicity about the 
cotterV hearthstone ; the blazing ingle of the 
country tavern, where the drunken cronies, '' victori- 
ous o'er all ills," sing their joll}^ catches, oblivious of 
the storm without, or the wrathful wife at home ; 
the current controversy between the Auld and New 
Lichts in the Kirk ; a wounded hare, or a flock oi 
startled water-fowl ; such are the homely materials 
ready to his hand, from which his poems are fash^ 
ioned. We find in them that high gift which can- 
not be gained by a study of any Art of Poetry^ of 
seeing with a fresh and penetrating insight. For 
while in one sense Burns' poems are local, they are 

* " To Wilham Simpson." 
f Carlyle, '' Essay on Burns." 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 303 

none the less for all the world, so instinctively does 
he fasten upon those features of the life about him 
which best reflect in little some general human 
experience, and so appeal to the common heart of 
mankind. The spirit of Tam o' Shanter, defying care 
and the morrow, is the spirit of Sir Toby in Twelfth 
Nighty rousing 

*' the night owl with a catch." 

Set to a more heroic key, it is tliat of Antony when 
he exclaims, while the sword hangs over him : 

*' Come, 
Let's have one other gaudy niglit : call to me 
All my sad Captains : fill our bowls once more. 
Let's mock the midnight bell." * 

And more, Avhat is this but an expression of that 
imperative desire to snatch the present joy which, in 
greater or smaller measure, is in us. all. The poet 
who can look through the vesture in which life 
clothes itself, and find beneath the abiding human 
significance, who can enter into and immortalize those 
elements of pleasure, pain, and passion which make 
the substratum of our human comedy, that poet has 
shown us the universal in the local. 

Robert Burns, the son of a small farmer in Ayr- 
shire, was born January 25, 1759. His family were 
poor, so that Burns could get but little regular edu- 
cation, and remained " a hardworked plowboy." 
Through all his labor he was a great reader, having 
a ballad book before him at meal times and whistlincf 

"^Antony and Cleopatra, act ill. scene 2. 



304 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the songs of Scotland while guiding the plow. On 
the death of his father in 1*784, Robert and his 
brother and sisters took a farm together, but it 
proved unprofitable. By this time lie had written 
numerous songs, and l^ad gained by them considera- 
ble local reputation. His affairs were so involved 
that he thought of leaving the country, but changed 
his mind on receiving an invitation from a Dr. 
Blacklock, who had lieard of his poetical ability, to 
visit Edinburgh. At Edinburgh, Burns, with his 
genius and flavor of rusticity, his massive head and 
glowing eyes, became the reigning sensation. In 
1788 he leased a farm in Dumfriesshire, married 
Jean Armour, and spent one of his few peaceful and 
happy years. In 1789 he was appointed exciseman, 
that is, the district inspector of goods liable to a tax. 
From this time the habit of intemperance gained on 
him. His health and spirits failed, and spells of 
reckless drinking were followed by intervals of 
remorse and attempted recovery. His genius did 
not desert him, and some of his best songs were com- 
posed during this miserable time. He died July 21^ 
1796, worn out and prematurely old at thirty-seven, 
one of the great song writers of the world. 

In spite of those weaknesses which cut off a life 
•' that might have grown full straight," Burns' poetry 
is unmistakably the utterance of a sincere, large- 
hearted, and essentially noble nature, pleasure-loving 
and full of laughter as a child, yet broken by a man's 
grief ; a nature with more than a woman's tenderness 
and with the poet's soul quivering at the throb of 
pain. 



TH£ BEGINNING 0^ MODEM LITERATURE 305 

** Still thou art blest, compared wi' me. 
The present only toucheth thee ; 
But och ! I backward cast ray e'e 

On prospects drear ! 
An' forward, tho' I canna see, 

I guess and fear/' 

Here in the midst of the lingering affectations of 
the time vibrates the anguish of Burns' lyrical cry, 
quivering with the unmistakable accent of human 
Buffering. This is the universal language of passion 
not to be learned in the schools. Hence Burns' love 
songs, from the impassioned lyric flow of " My Luve 
is Like a Red, Red Rose," or " O, Wert Thou in the 
Cauld Blast," to the quiet anguish of "Ae Fond 
Kiss and then We Sever," or the serene beauty of 
"To Mary in Heaven," are among the truest and 
best in the language. 

In "The Cotter's Saturday Night," as we ent<jr 
the dwelling and identify ourselves with the daily 
life of the poor, we feel for ourselves that touch of 
brotherhood which in other poems it is Burns' mis- 
sion to directly declare. Never perhaps since Lang- 
land's Piers Ploicman has the complaint of the poor 
found such articulate expression. 

*' See yonder poor, overlabored wight, 
So abject, mean, and vile. 
Who begs a brother of the earth 
To give him leave to toil ; 
And see his lordly fellow- worm 
The poor petition spurn, 
Unmindful though a weeping wife 
And helpless offspring mourn " 



306 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

When Burns wrote that 

** Man's inhumanity to man 
Makes countless thousands mourn/" 

he expressed what thousands were coming to feel ; 
when he wrote 

** A king can make a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke, and a* that ; 
But an honest man's aboon his might, 
Guid faith he maunna fa' that, 

For a' that, and a' that, 

Their dignities and a' that, 
The pith o' sense and pride o' worth 

Are higher ranks than a' that,'' 

he gave to the world the greatest declaration in 
poetry of human equality and the glory of simple 
manhood. But^ like that of Cowper, Burns' com- 
prehensive sympathy reaches beyond the circle of 
human life. He stands at the furrow to look at 
the "tim'rous" field-mouse, whose tiny house his 
plow has laid in ruins, and his soul is broad enough 
to think of the trembling creature gently and hum- 
bly as his 

*' Poor earth-born companion 
An' fellow-mortal." 
r 
Like Byron, he was a poet of the revolution, but he 

distinguished more clearly than Byron between the 
shams and conventionalities which he attacks, and 
that which was enduring and worthy of reverence. 
Merciless and daring in his satire upon the cant and 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 301 

hypocrisy of those who, as he thought, used religion 
as a cloak for wickedness, he had himself a deeply 
reverential and religious nature which never con- 
fused the abuse of the thing with the thing abused.* 
He is the poet of nature as well as of man ; he would 
make the streams and burnies of Scotland shine in 
verse with the Ilissus and the Tiber, and 

" Sing Auld Coila's plains and fells ; " 

and finally in his stirring songs of Bannockburn 
he is the poet of patriotic Scotland. '' Lowland 
Scotland," it has been said, '^ came in with her war- 
riors and went out with her bards. It came in with 
William Wallace and Robert Bruce, and went out 
with Robert Burns and Walter Scott. The first two 
made the history ; the last two told the story and 
sung the song." 

STUDY LIST 

BUBXS 

L '^The Cotters Saturday Xight ; " ^'Tam o' Shanter;" 
*' The Twa Dogs ;" " The Brigs of Ayr.'' 

II. Sympathy with Xature axd Aximals, "To a Moun- 
tain Daisy;" ''To a Mouse on Turning up her Xest with a. 
Plough ;" ''On Scaring some Water-fowl in Loch Turit ; " 
" On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp by ]\[e." 

III. *' Address to the Deil ;" *' Address to the Unco' Guid." 

IV. Songs.—" O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast ; " "John 
Anderson, My Jo ; " " To Mary in Heaven;" "Highland 
Mary;" "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon ; " "Flow 

* F. Epistle to the Rev. Dr. McMatli, verse v, " They tat 
religion in their mouths," and the one following. 



308 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

Gently, Sweet Afton;'' "O, My Luve's like a Red, Red 
Rose ; " '* Scots Wha Hae wi' Wallace Bled ; " ** Is there foi 
Honest Poverty ; '* ** Macplierson's Farewell." 

V. Biography and Criticism. — Carlyle's Essay on Burns ; 
Shairp's Aspects of Poetry y p. 179 ; Shairp's Life of Burns, 
Professor Blackie's Life of Burns; v. also poems on Burns by 
Wordsworth and by Wliittier. A notable recent edition of 
the poems is the Centenary, edited by Henley and Henderson. 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. — 1770-1850 

Toward the close of the eighteenth century we 
reach, in the French Revolution, tlie most stormy 
and critical period in the history of modern Europe. 
Toward this consummation Europe had been rapidly 
moving. Poet and philosopher had gone before it, 
while to the toiling masses, starved, overtaxed, 
oppressed, the burden was becoming intolerable. 
Now, during the earlj^ acts of that terrible drama, the 
cloud-land visions and lofty speculations of poet and 
philosopher, looking for the coming of a Golden Age 
of peace and brotherhood, seemed to many to be 
passing out of the region of speculation into the 
world of substantial fact. Cowper in The Task had 
cried out against the Bastile as a shameful "house of 
bondage " ; * four years later it fell before the fury of 
a Parisian mob (1789). Then 

*' France her giant limbs upreared, 
And with that oath which smote earth, air, and sea, 
Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free.'^t 

lijurope looked on breathless, as the whole glittering 
fabric of French feudalism, rotten at the base, sud- 

* The Task, Bk. v. The passage should be re^d in class. 

f Coleridge, *' Fraiice, An Odec" 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 309 

denly crashed into ruin. The ancient barriers of 
custom and authority were swept away as in a night ; 
the floods were out ; the Revolution begun. Blake 
walked the streets of London wearing the red 
cockade of the revolutionists, and the passionate 
hopes for the future of the race broadened far 
beyond the old national limits, to embrace the whole 
family of man. Even the great statesman Pitt 
sympathized with the Revolutionists, and Fox is said 
to have exclaimed, on hearibg of the destruction of 
the Basstile, " How much is this the greatest event 
tliat ever happened in tlie world, and how much the 
best ! " Edmund Burke, indeed, stood aloof from 
the rest, a solitary and impregnable tower of conserva- 
tism, and in Edinburgh the young Walter Scott, whose 
intense sympathy with that chivalric past was to 
revive its glories in the pages of poetry and romance, 
looked on at the fury of demolition w^ith characteris- 
tic disapproval. But for the most part the hopes of 
youth, and of all the ardent and enthusiastic spirits of 
the time, went out toward the revolutionists in a great 
torrent of exultation. The imagination of the youth- 
ful poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge, and Robert Southey, all in the impressionable 
years of opening manhood when the Revolution began, 
was fired by the idea that the world was being made 
anew. They trod the earth in rapture, their eyes 
fixed upon a vision of the dawn. Looking back upon 
this time one of their number wrote : 

*' Bliss was it in that Dawn to be alive, 
But to be young was very heaven/'* 

* Wordsworth, TTie Prelude, bk. xj. 



310 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 

A spirit of change was in the air which showed 
itself in many ways. In England it expressed itself 
in a more positive reaction against much that was 
hollow and artificial in the life and literature of an 
earlier time. The longing for something natural 
and genuine became the master passion of the new 
leaders of thought. Xot only does the new love of 
nature and of man inspire the poetry of Wordsworth 
and of Coleridge, they are the leaders of a deliberate 
attack on the artificial poetic manner exemplified in 
the poetry of Pope. Wordsworth came determined 
to destroy the old ^^ poetic diction " and set up a 
simpler and truer manner in its stead. Another but 
later expression of tliis longing for what is genuine 
is found in the works of the great prose writer 
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1 SSI), who fiercely denounced 
all '* shams,'' railed against the eigiiteenth century 
as an ei:a of fraud and unbelief, and preached that 
men " should come back to reality, that they should 
stand upon things and not upon the shows of things."' 
In these, and in many similar ways, the period at 
wliich we have now arrived was an era. of revolution. 
In many spheres of thought and action the old order 
was changing, yielding place to new. 

William Wordsworth, one of the great leaders in 

this era of change, was born April 7, 1770, at Cocker. 

mouth, a little village on the river Der- 

William ^vent in the countv of Cumberland. His 
Wordsworth. ^ o- x 

father, the law agent to Sir James 

Lowther, was descended from an ancient family of 

Yorkshire landowners, while his mother's ancestors 

bad been among* the landed o-entrv of Cumberland 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 31] 

since the reign of Edward III. On both sides, 
therefore, the poet came of a family stock deeply 
rooted in the country soil, and he may well have 
inherited from this long line of provincial ancestors 
that sympathy with the country, and with the simple 
incidents of country life, which is a principal element 
in his verse. Cumberland, a singularly lovely region 
of lake and mountain, was then far more remote than 
at present from the activities of the outside world. 
Wordsworth was gifted with a wonderful suscepti- 
bility to natural beauty, and the serenity and grandeur 
of his early surroundings entered deep into his life 
to become the very breath of his being. In his daily 
companionship with nature he seems to have felt at 
first a kind of primitive and unreasoning rapture, to 
be changed in later years for a more profound and 
conscious love. His more regular education was 
obtained at Hawkshead School, in Lancashire, and 
at Cambridge. But college and the fixed routine of 
college studies failed to touch his entliusiasm, and 
he is said to have occupied himself before coming up 
for his degree in reading Richardson's novels. He 
graduated in 1791, but, as may be supposed, without 
having distinguished himself. On leaving Cam- 
bridge he spent some months in visiting London and 
elsewhere, finally crossing to France, where he caught 
the contagion of republicanism, and was on the 
point of offering himself as a leader of the Girondist 
party. His relations, alarmed for his safety, stopped 
his supplies, and in 1792 lack of money compelled 
his return. On reaching England he found himself 
with no profession and without definite prospects. 



312 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

After th^-ee years in this unsettled condition he was 
unexpectedly placed beyond actual want by a timely 
legacy of £900 from liis friend Raisley Calvert, who 
had discerned in Wordsworth the promise of future 
greatness, and who wished to make liim free to pursue 
his chosen career. Shortly before this he had made 
his first public ventures in poetry {An Evening Walk, 
1793 ; Descriptive Sketches, 1793). After the receipt 
of Calvert's legacy he took a cottage at Racedown 
in Dorsetshire with his devoted sister Dorothy, 
resolved to dedicate himself to poetry. From this 
time Wordsworth's life was of the most studiously 
simple, severe, and uneventful description, an example 
of that '^ plain living and high thinking "in which 
he believed. It was lived close to nature, in the 
circle of deep home attachments, and in the society 
of a few chosen friends, but it resembled that of 
Milton in its solemn consecration to the high service 
of his art, and in its consistent nobility and loftiness 
of tone. Leaving Racedown in 1797, Wordsworth 
settled at Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey, Somerset- 
shire, where his genius rapidly developed under the 
stimulating companionship of his friend Coleridge. 
Here the two poets worked together, and in 1798 
published the Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems 
to which each contributed. This work, by its delib- 
erate departure from the outworn poetic manner, 
marks an era in the history of English poetry. It is 
in his preface to the second edition of this work 
(published 1800) that Wordsworth made his famous 
onslaught upon the school of Pope, declaring, among 
Qtber things, that poetry was not to be made by rules, 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN I^ITKBATURE 313 

but tliat it was " the spontaneous overflow of power- 
ful feelings." After this Wordsworth worked 
steadily, liolding to his own notions of poetry in 
spite of the ridicule of the critics and the neglect of 
the body of readers. In the winter of 1798-1799 he 
visited Germany. On liis return he settled in West- 
moreland, in the Lake District, living first at Grasmere 
(1799-1813), and finally removing to Rydal jNLount. 
In 1802 he married his cousin Mary Hutchinson, also 
a native of Cumberland. Miss Hutchinson, like 
Wordsworth's beloved sister Dorothy, had a rare 
appreciation of poetry. He had thus the devotion 
and sympathy of two gifted women, both capable of 
entering into his finest emotions and aspirations. 
The poet, his wife, and sister thus lived in an ideal 
and beautiful companionship, unfortunatelj^ but too 
rare in the lives of men of genius. Wordsworth's 
remaining years were passed at Rydal Mount, except 
when his tranquil existence was broken by short 
journeys on the Continent or elsewhere. As he 
advanced in life his work won its way in the public 
favor. He was made Poet Laureate in 1843, and 
died peacefully April 23, 1850, as his favorite clock 
struck the hour of noon. 

As a poet Wordsworth was surpassingly great 
within that somewhat restricted sphere which he has 

made peculiarly his own. He is deficient 

' n ^ , 1 ^ Wordsworth 

in a sense oi humor, he possesses but as a poet. 

little dramatic force or narrative skill, 

and he fails in a broad and living sympathy with the 

diverse passions and interests of human life. These 

liniitations will always tend to make bira the ])oet oi 



314 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the appreciative few. To him, indeed, his own words 
are strikingly applicable : 

** He is retired as noontide dew, 

Or fountain in a noonday grove ; 
And you must love him, ere to you 
He will seem worthy of your love." * 

Yet he is as truly the poet of the mysterious world 
we call nature, as Shakespeare is the poet of the life 
of man. He, more than all other poets, teaches us to 
enter into that world and find in it the very temple 
of God, in which and through which He himself will 
draw close to us. 

For Wordsworth's mystical rapture in the presence 
of the living world is very different from a merely 
sensuous or aesthetic delight ; it is, in his highest 
moods, a profoundly religious emotion. In the inten- 
sity of his contemplation, his own being is lost in the 
flood of universal life "that rolls through all things," 
and in an ecstasy of aspiration he is " laid asleep in 
body and becomes a living soul." f Such a mood^ 
unintelligible to more phlegmatic and commonplace 
natures, is characteristic of those in whom the appre- 
hension of ideal or spiritual things is exceptionally 
strong. Plato or Plotinus, the passive Brahmin of 
the East, or the German Taulei\ seeks^ each in his 
own fashion, to erect himself above himself by an 
ecstasy of thought or emotion. '^By ecstasy," said 
Plotinus, " the soul becomes loosened from its material 
prison, separated from individual consciousness, and 
becomes absorbed into the Infinite Intelligence from 

* '' A Poet's Epitaph/* 

f " Lines on Eevisiting Tintern Abbey/' 



I^HE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 315 

which it emanated." Now to Wordswortli the path 
of escape from the " material prison," the avenue of 
access to the *^ Infinite Intelligence," lay through 
communion with the informing life in Nature. His 
assurance tliat the universe was not a mechanical 
contrivance, like a huge piece of clockwork, whose 
motive power was law, but a something divinely alive, 
is the basis alike of his poetry and his philosophy. 
This seemingly stolid countryman, with somewhat 
the aspect of a benignant farmer, recognizes the 
presence of a sentient life in brook and flower, with 
the poetic apprehension of the Greek in the dewy 
morning of tlie world. He teaches that if we will 
but pause in our perpetual quest, and let Nature work 
her will on us, active influences, at work within her, 
will go out to us. 

** Nor less I deem that there are powers. 
Which of themselves our minds impress, 
That we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness,"* 

In accord with this is Wordsworth's reiterated 
teaching that nature, and the deep joy in nature, 
is, or should be, the great formative influence in the 
life of man. If in youth man lies on the lap of his 
great Earth-Mother, something passes into his life 
which later experience, and the worldliness Avhich 
may come with years, can never " utterly abolish or 
destrov." f It seemed to Wordsworth that the secret 
of life was to hold fast youth's generous emotions, 
its high imaginings, its deep fountains of joy, as an 

* ** Expostulation and Reply/' 

f '' Ode on Intimations of Immortality " 



316 tNTRODUCl^ION tO :fiN(^LISfl LiTiltlATtJIlS 

antidote to the deadening and contaminating 

influences of the world. He believed that it was 

by a consistent fellowship with nature that this 

precious conservation of our high emotions could best 

be accomplished. To see again in age some aspect of 

nature which sank deep into the soul in youth ; to 

hear again in age that cry of the cuckoo which 

enchanted us in boyhood, is to revive our youthful 

rapture, and " beget that golden time again." * Thua 

a "natural piety," binding our days each to eacb,f 

should inoculate us against the contagion of the world. 

Wordsworth celebrates the beauty, harmony, and 

sublimity of nature ; he is fortified by its calm and 

its unbroken order ; sustained with 
Limitations . i i u ^i, • ^ 

of Words- eternal hopes by the unwearied i^e- 

worth's newal of the vernal earth, by the 

Sri ""^ ''^' '' cheerful faith " that " all which we be- 
hold is full of blessings." J But Nature 
is not all a May day; she has a harsh and terrifying 
side, of which Wordsworth was apparently oblivious. 
He is silent as to her mysterious discords of pain, 
cruelty, and death. So far as we can tell he is unim- 
pressed by any feeling of her magnificent indiffer- 
ence to man. To this extent his poetry of nature is 
partial and incomplete. Nevertheless, in this very 
incompleteness lies one source of Wordsworth's tran- 
quilizing and uplifting power. We are refreshed 
and sanctified by the very unreservedness of his con- 
viction that the whole world is but the temple of the 
living God. Of all the poets who in the eighteenth 

* " Lines to the Cuckoo/' f '* The Rainbow ' 

t ** Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey.'- 



TfiE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 317 

century came to lead a rouged and tired generation 
of intrigue and scandal back to that mother-world to 
which they Lad become as strangers, Wordsworth 
proved himself the greatest and most inspired guide. 
The muraaur of the Derwent,* the clouds gathered 
about the setting sun, the splendors of lonely dawns, 
the solitude of mountain peak and lake and forest^ 
all these things had been his world, and consciously 
and unconsciously the amplitude and sublimity of 
that world, extending inimitably about us in its large 
patience and inscrutable repose, possessed and en- 
larged his soul. His life rises to the dignity of a 
great example, because it is so outwardly ordinary 
and so inwardly exceptional ; because he showed us 
how to make a new use of those familiar sources of 
joy and comfort which lie open to all who have eyes 
to see and ears to hear. His life was severely simple, 
yet the world was his, even as, up to the measure of 
our power of receiving, we may make it ours. It is 
this serene and noble simplicity of Wordsworth's life 
and character that sheds over certain of his poems 
an indescribable and altogether incomparable charm 
Such short lyrics as ^' The Solitary Reaper," the 
poems to "Lucy " or "The Primrose of the Rock," 
are filled with that characteristic and magical ex- 
cellence which refuses to be analyzed or defined. 
Wordsworth's sonnets are among the best in the litera- 
ture, and his longer poems, such as The Excursion^ 
while deficient in compactness and structure, are 
illumined by passages of wonderful wisdom and 
beauty. At times, as in those characteristic master- 
*F, The Prelude. 



318 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

pieces, the great companion odes *' To Duty " and 
" On the Intimations of Immortality from Recollec- 
tions of Early Childhood," his verse has an elevation 
and a large majesty of utterance unheard in English 
poetry since the deep-throated harmonies of Milton. 
In spite of frequent lapses, Wordsworth's poetic art 
is of a very high order, and places him with the 
greatest poets of England. 

In a very real sense Wordsworth is the poet of the 
new democracy, as he is of the new love of nature. 
The chosen characters of his poems 
democr^v ^^'^ ^^^ simple and hardy peasants of 
his native Cumberland. Like the good 
Lord Clifford, in the " Song at the Feast of 
Brougham Castle," he found love in ^^huts where 
poor men lie." Once it was a canon of literary art 
that the shepherd-hero should prove to be a prince 
in disguise, or the charming slieplierdess, like Per- 
dita, the lost daughter of a queen. But Wordsworth, 
speaking for a world that has outworn its feudalism, 
discards all such adventitious and once necessary 
means of enlisting our sympathy. '^The man's the 
gowd for a' that," and it is the deep democratic ieeh 
ing to which we have now grown so accustomed in 
our modern literature that gives the sorrows of 
Margaret or of the old shepherd Michael an equal 
place in the world's heart with the most royal of 
sufferers, recognizing in such a common humanity 
consecrated by the dignity of a great grief. 

Matthew Arnold, himself a poetic disciple of 
Wordsworth, has thus summed up the peculiar great- 
ness of his master's work : " Wordsworth's poetry is 



l-HE BEGlNNiNa OF MODERN LlTfiHATURE 319 

great because of the extraordinary power with which 
Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the 
joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and 
duties ; and because of the extraordinary power with 
which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, and 
renders it so as to make us share it." * 

STUDY LIST 
WILLIAM WOBDSWORTH 

1. Ode. Intimations of Immortaxity from Eecollec- 
TiONS OF Early Childhood, (a) This is one of the finest 
among English odes, as well as one of the greatest of Words- 
worth's poems. As poetry it has a wonderful nobility and 
majesty, and, especially in certain stanzas {e.g., IX.), ha's a lin- 
gering grandeur of diction which recalls Milton. It is also of 
the first importance as an expression of Wordsworth's teacliing. 
The artistic success with which it combines philosophy with 
poetry is worthy of attention from those who, like Keats, con- 
tend that they should be kept separate. 

(h) The form of the poem. The poem belongs to that variety 
of lyric verse known as the ode, from Greek Ldij, akidcj, to 
sing). Gosse defines an ode as '' any strain of enthusiastic and 
exalted lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and dealing 
progressively with one dignified theme." Odes are usually of 
complicated and irregular meter, and are commonly divided 
into stanzas of unequal length. Look up origin and history of 
the ode, place in Greek literature, etc. Name famous Greek 
writer of odes, and give some account of him. What are some 
of the best known odes in English literature ? What famous 
ode was written by J. R. Lowell ? 

(c) Study of the poem. Fundamental idea is found in its title. 
Stanzas I. to lY. Early sympathy with nature. Does such 
feeling of nearness to nature commonly exist in childhood t 
In what other poems does Wordsworth treat of depth of early 

* Introduction to Selections from Wordsworth. 



320 INTBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

impressions of nature, and insist on their importance ? What 
is the exact force of phrase, " apparelled in celestial light" ? 
Of. '* Evening Ode," a poem of Wordsworth's later life, 
(1818) : 

" From worlds not quickened by the sun 
A portion of the gift is won ; 
An intermingling of Heaven's pomp is spread 
On ground which British shepherds tread." 

Of. Browning's Prologue in " Asolando" which treats of 
the loss in age of the youthful delight in nature : 

** And now a flower is just a flower : 

Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man — 
Simply themselves, uncinct by dower 
Of dyes which, when life's day began, 
Round each in glory ran." 

The first division of the ode may be said to end with ques- 
tion at conclusion of Stanza lY. 

Stanza Y. A break in the composition of poem occurred 
between Stanzas lY. and Y. Wordsworth says : '' This was 
composed during my residence at Town End, Grasmere. 
Two years at least passed between the writing of the first 
four stanzas and tho remaining part " {Memoirs of William 
Wordsworth, by Christopher Wordsworth, D. D.). The poem 
was composed partly in 1803 and partly in 1806. What is the 
connection between Stanzas lY. and Y. ? For the doctrine of 
a pre-natal existence Wordsworth went to Socrates and Plato 
{Of., also, ideas in Eastern philosophy on this point, docirine 
of metempsychosis, etc.) V. Plato's Phcedo, Meno, Republic, x. 
617, etc. Commenting on this portion of the poem, Wordsworth 
writes: *'To that dreamlike vividness and splendor which 
invest objects of sight in childhood, everyone, I believe, if he 
would look back, couid bear testimony, and I need not dwell 
upon it here ; but having in the poem regarded it as presump- 
tive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to 
protest against a conclusion which has given pain to some ^'cod 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 321 

and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It 
is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith as 
more than an element in our instincts of immortality," etc. 
{Memoirs of Wordsworth) supra. Gf.^ for expression of this 
feeling of reminiscence of previous existence, Henry Yaughan's 
''Retreat," given in Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Lowell's 
''In the Twilight," Browning's "Christina," Tennyson's 
** Two Voices" (stanza beginning " It may be that no life is 
found," and those following); last stanza of Hood's "I 
remember, I remember," etc., also passages in Wordsworth 
embodying same idea. Stanza YI. treats of conflict between 
our natural affiuit}^ with an eternal sphere, and the earthly and 
temporal. (In the title of the poem the word "immortal" has 
rather the force of " eternal." v. Richardson's Dictionary.) This 
is a favorite idea with Wordsworth ; cite other passages in 
which he develops it. Stanza YII. This is simply in illus- 
tration of the preceding stanza. Cf., Longfellow's sonnet, 
"Nature," and contrast Vo'^e's> Essay on Man, Epistle IL, 275- 
282. Wordsworth had Hartley Coleridge in mind in this de- 
scription ; v. Memoirs of Hartley Coleridge, by his brother. 
Stanza YIII. turns on the question, "Why with such earnest 
pains," etc., and with it we reach another natural division of the 
poem. Stanza IX. sets forth the central thought. The soul's 
reminiscences of a previous state are made the witness to its 
kinship with an eternal order of things. " Custom " cannot 
utterly " destroy " this "something" that yet lives in the soul, 
and high instincts remain which are "the fountain light of 
all our day." On the corrupting effect of " custom" on the 
soul, cf. Plato's treatment of the story of the sea-god Glaucus, 
Eepublic, x. 611 et seq. The soul, Plato declares, would 
become different if she followed her "divine impulse," but 
"she feeds upon earth and is overgrown by the good things of 
this life as they are termed," etc. (Jowett's translation.) Stanzas 
X.-XI. The whole concludes with a strain of assured triumph. 
The "primal sympathy" with the eternal order, " having 
been must ever be." " Thanks to the human heart by which 
we live," etc. Look up and cf with this " We live by admi 
ration, hope, and love ; " cf, also. Browning's Paracelsus. 



322 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LlTEBATUBE 

'* Were man all mind— he gains 
A station Httle enviable. From God 
Down to the lowest spirit ministrant. 
Intelligence exists which casts our mind 
Into immeasurable shade. No, no ! 
Love, hope, fear, faith— these make humanity ; 
These are its sign, and note, and character." 

— Paracelsus, p. 93. 

Cf, with these two stanzas the earlier and the maturer feeling 
for nature in ** Tintern Abbey" : 

*' For I have learned 
To look on ISTature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
The still, sad music of humanity, 
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue." 

*'Tome the meanest flower that blows," etc. Cf. Brown- 
ing's " Prologue," supra. Consider this poem as a whole, 
state into what divisions it naturally falls, point out the con- 
nection between the stanzas, and the relation of the thoughts 
of the whole to Wordsworth's other work. For the ode in 
general, consult Theodore Watts' article on "Poetry" in Ency- 
clopoedia Britannica, and note his estimate of the *' Immor- 
tality Ode" as " the finest irregular ode in the language." 

2. Ode to Duty. Compare this poem with the foregoing. 
On what two helps to right conduct does Wordsworth rely in 
these two poems? Of. with this *' Sonnet on Beach at 
Calais." 

B. ^*To the Cuckoo," ''The Reverie of Poor Susan," 
" My Heart Leaps Up," etc., " The Daffodils," " Three Years 
She Grew," etc. What idea have all these poems in common ? 
Explain the connection of this idea with Wordsworth's philos- 
ophy of life. 

4. " Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey „" " Laodamia," 
one of Wordsworth's few classical poems. What was his 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 323 

feeling in general toward modern attempts to revive classical 
subjects ? What comment illustrative of this did he make 
on Keats' Endymionf Cf. these two poets on this basis. 
What Latin poet had Wordsworth been reading before he 
wrote **Laodamia"? What is the central thought of the 
poem ? 

5. Sonnets. '' The World is Too Much With Us ; " '' Mil- 
ton;" "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3. 
1803 ; " " They Dreamed Not of a Perishable Home ; " *' Writ- 
ten in London, September, 1802 ; " " When I Have Borne in 
Memory What Has Tamed.'' Give some account of history 
of sonnet in England before Wordsworth. Can you name 
any sonnet writers in early part of eighteenth centii^y ? Who 
was William Lisle Bowles ? 

6. Narrative. *' Hart-leap Well," ''Euth,** "Michael," 
*' The Brothers," " Rob Roy's Grave." 

7. Lyrical. "The Solitary Reaper," "The Primrose of 
Uie Rock," "The Grave of Burns," " She Dwelt Among the 
Untrodden Ways," " She was a Phantom of Delight," "The 
Affliction of Margaret," " A Poet's Epitaph," "Expostulation 
and Reply," " The Tables Turned." 

8. Biography and Criticism. Knight's Life of (Mac- 
millan), 3 vols., is the most complete. Myers's Wordsworth, 
English Men of Letters Series, is extremely good ; see also Lee's 
Dorothy Wordsworth, Fields's Yesterdays with Authors, John- 
son's Three Americans and Three Englishmen, Hewitt's Haunts 
and Homes of British Poets, Hutton's Essays in Literary Criti- 
cism. Leslie Stephen's "Essay on the Ethics of Wordsworth," 
in Hours in a Library, third series, is a masterly presentation 
of Wordsworth's teaching. Matthew Arnold's " Introduc- 
tion" to his Selections from Wordsworth, and J. R. Lowell's 
essays on Wordsworth in Among My Books, My Study Win- 
dows, and Democracy and Other Addresses, are of great value. 
See also Shairp's Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, Shairp's 
Poetic Lnterpretation of Nature ; also Swinburne's "Words- 
worth and Byron," Nineteenth Century, April and May, 1884 
(also in Miscellanies). 



324 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. — 1772-1834 

Wordsworth lived out his long, blameless, and 
devoted life under conditions singularly favorable to 
the full development of his genius. Freed from the 
pressure of money difficulties, and enabled to live 
simply amid the loveliest of natural surroundings, 
happy in his home and in his friends, and blessed 
with health and energy, he has left us a shining 
example of a serene and truly successful life. The 
story of Coleridge, Wordsworth's friend and fellow 
poet, is tragically different. It is the story of a man 
of rare and varied gifts, wdio, from whatever cause, 
could not, or did not, put forth his powers to the full. 
Carlyle has condensed this into one epigrammatic 
sentence : " To the man himself Nature had given, 
in high measure, the seeds of a noble endowment ; 
and to unfold it had been forbidden him." 

Samtiel Taylor Coleridge, the youngest of a large 
family, was the son of tlie vicar and schoolmaster at 
the little town of Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. Left 
an orphan in his ninth year, he was admitted to the 
Charity School at Clirist's Hospital, London, and 
began the unequal fight of life. Here he met 
Charles Lamb, who has recorded some of their joint 
experiences in one of his Essays of Elia,^ From the 
first, Coleridge seems to have lialf lived in a dream- 
world, created by ^' the shaping spirit of imagina- 
tion," wliich, as he says, " Nature gave me at my 
birth." f As a little child he wandered over the 

* Recollections of Chrisfs HospitaL 
f Coleridge's ''Dejection; an Ode." 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 325 

Devonshire fields, slashing the tops off weeds and 
nettles in the character of one of the '' Seven Cham- 
pions of Christendom "; and in school at London he 
would lie for hours on the roof, gazing after the drift- 
ing clouds while his schoolfellows played football in 
the court below ; or in the midst of the crowded 
Strand, he would fancy himself Leander swimming 
the Hellespont. A hopelessly erratic, inconsequent 
element runs through his whole life, depriving it of 
unity and steady purpose. At nineteen he went to 
Cambridge and furnished his rooms with no thought 
of his inability to pay the upholsterers ; then, under 
the pressure of a comparatively trifling debt, he gave 
up all his prospects, fled to London, and enlisted in 
the Dragoons. He returned to Cambridge, but left 
there in 1794 without taking a degree. Visiting 
Oxford in this year, he met the youthful Southey, in 
whom he found a kindred spirit. Both were feeling 
that impulse from the French Revolution which was 
agitating Europe. The^^ agreed that human society 
should be reconstructed, and decided to begin the 
reform by establishing an ideal community in the 
wilds of America. The new form of government 
was to be called a Pantisocracy, or the government 
by all, and the citizens were to combine farming and 
literature. The bent of the two poets at this time is 
shown by the subjects of their work. They com- 
posed together a poem on The Fall of liohesjnerre, 
and Southey 's Wat Tyler (1794) is charged with the 
revolutionary spirit. In 1795 Coleridge married 
Sarah Fricker, whose sister Edith became the wife of 
Southey a few weeks later. The p^-ntisQcratic iscbeme 



326 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was given up for lack of funds, and Coleridge and 
his wife settled at Clevedon, on the Bristol Channel. 
It was about two years after this that he met Words- 
worth at Alfoxden, contributing The Ancient Mar- 
iner to their joint venture, the Lyrical Ballads, In 
1798 Coleridge left for Germany, where he remained 
about two years, receiving a fresh and powerful 
stimulus from the new intellectual and literary life 
on wliich that nation had just entered. An immedi- 
ate result of the visit was a translation of Schiller's 
Walle72stein, but its effect on Coleridge's tone of 
thought was profound and lasting. Through him, 
and afterward through Thomas Carlyle, the influence 
of German literature began for the first time to tel] 
on that of England. 

Coleridge returned to England in 1800. He gave 
up an excellent opening in journalism to lead a life of 
quietness and study, settling near Keswick, in Cum- 
berland, a district to which his friend Wordsworth 
had already retreated. Here he w^as full of great* 
plans ; life seemed growing easier, but his work was 
interrupted by illness, and to quiet the torments oT 
gout and neuralgia, he unhappily resorted to a quack 
specific containing opium. 

He thus gradually came undev the power of this 
terrible drug, and for the next fifteen years he battled 
with a habit which was clouding his splendid intellect, 
and benumbing his energies and his will. To follow 
this melancholy story is like watching the eJBforts of 
gome hurt creature struggling in the toils. Estranged 
from his family, he became, as he writes, " the most 
miserable of men, having a home and yet homeless." 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 327 

Finally, under the care of a Mr. Gilman, a surgeon, 
at Higligate, London, he conquered his fatal liabit. 

Carlyle, who visited him at Mr. Gilman's, says that 
he "gave you the idea of a life that had been full of 
sufferings ; a life heavy laden, half vanquished, still 
swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical 
and other bewilderment." * Once, with the sense of 
power strong within him, he had looked forward to 
the composition of some mighty works which should 
adequately express his genius ; now, with so much 
yet undone, he was beaten and disheartened, tired by 
the long fight against himself and the world. His 
health was shattered, his will weakened, while the 
sense of failure weighed him down. In one of his 
later poems he pictures himself as listless and inert in 
the midst of the glad young vigor of the spring, idle 
while " all nature seems at work " about him, his 
sadness but deepened by the melancholy sense of 
contrast. In him the motive power is extinct. 

" And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul ? 
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve. 
And hope without an object caunot live." 

Such poems bring us closer to him than any intru- 
sive words of criticism. Youth and Age is even 
more beautiful in its patient hopelessness and the 
pathos of its unavailing look backward to a lost youthc 

** This breathing house not built with hands. 
This body that does me grievous wrong, 
O'er aery cliffs and glitteiing sands, 
How lightly then it flashed along — 

* Carlyk's Life of Sterling, 



328 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Naught cared this body for v\-ind or weather 
When youth and I lived in"t together." 

SoWy when " no hope is," 

" Life's a warning 
That only series to make us grieve, 

When we are old ; 
That only serves to make us grieve 
TTith oft and tedious taking-leave, 
Like some poor nigh-related guest, 
That may not rudely be dismist. 
Yet hath outstayed his welcome while, 
And tells the jest without the smile."* 

Hopeless as the sadness of this poem is, it is yet the 
sadness of a tranquil and quiet acceptance of a great 
loss. In nothing is the real sweetness and soundness 
of this man's nature more manifest than in the 
absence of all taint of bitterness, of peevish com- 
plaint or Byronic despair. What he deems his own 
failure does not prevent his genuine delight in Words- 
worth's great achievements. And when at last — as 
in one of his own poems — Hope and Love, overtasked, 
at length give way, their mute sister, Patience 

" Both supporting, does the work of both.'' f 

When Coleridge wrote his words of regret for the 
youth and life that seemed to have slipped away from 
him so fast, the corruptible body was already pressing 
heavily on the mind that mused upon so many things. 
Four years later, on July 25, 1834, he was delivered 
from the burden of the flesh. The world had let him 
die in his conviction of failure, but no sooner had the 

* Coleridge's '' Youth and Age." 
t *' Love, Hope and Patience in Education *' 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITEllATUKE 329 

grave closed over bim than England resounded with 
his praise. 

If Wordsworth's was a life lived out in the still, 
high altitudes of thought, if it was heroic in its 
simplicity and austerity, it has in it a certain chill 
that seems to come from its very loftiness and isola- 
tion. But Coleridge, with his rare and lovely nature, 
is perpetually hurting himself against the rough 
places of an uncompromising world. He is strug- 
gling all his life with the crowd, stumbling, and 
beateii, and disheartened, and by the mysterious law 
of human suflFering, he gains a tenderness that we 
miss in Wordsworth in spite of all his successes. If 
Wordsworth has the stimulating vigor of the stoic, 
Coleridge has the great compassion of the Christian. 

For in spite of his inward conviction that he had 
failed, tliere is, especially in his later poems, the still- 
ness of a great calm. In Henry Crabbe Robinson's 
Diary there is this significant passage : ^' Last night 
he [Coleridge] concluded his fine development of the 
Prince of Denmark by an eloquent statement of the 
moral of the play. * Action,' he said, * is the great 
end of all ; no intellect, however grand, is valuable if 
it draw us from action and lead us to think and think 
of the time till action is passed \>j and we can do 
nothing.' Son:iebody said to me, ^ This is a satire on 
himself.' * No,' said I, ^ it is an elegy.' " 

Much of Coleridge's work is, like his life, fragmen- 
tary and incomplete ; yet its range and variety bear 
w^itne^s to the broad scope and many- Coleridge's 
sided vigor of his genius. He was one ^o^^- 
of thv great English talkers. On every han<J 



330 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

we find testimony to his personal influence upon 
his distinguished contemporaries. As a converser he 
held somewhat the same place as that occupied by- 
Samuel Johnson immediately before, and by Thomas 
Babington Macaulay immediately after him. 

In Coleridge's full life the writing of poetry was 
but one interest, even perhaps a somewhat incidental 
As philoso- ^^^' -^^s discursive energy spent itself 
pherand in philosophy, in theology, in political 
journalism, and in criticism. He strove 
to infuse into the common sense and materialistic 
English pliilosophy, the more ideal and spiritual 
character of contemporary German thought. He 
was the most profound and philosophic critic of his 
time. His Biographia Literaria contains ars expo- 
sition of Wordsworth's poetic principles even superior 
to that put forth by that poet himself. His lectures 
on Sharkespeare began an era in the history of Eng- 
lish Shakesperean criticism. 

Coleridge left but little poetry. Much of this is 
scrappy and unfinished, and no small proportion is 
obviously inferior in quality to his best 
As poet. poetic Avork. He seems to have required 

peculiar conditions for poetic composition ; inspira- 
tion came to him suddenly, in mysterious gusts, but 
often before a poem was finished it as suddenly left 
him, apparently, as powerless as an ordinary mortal to 
complete what none but him could have begun. 
Thus, after writing the second part of Christabel, a 
poem born of the very breath of inspiration, he 
waited vainly until the end of his life for the return 
of the creative mood. He tells us that when writing 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 331 

Kuhla Khan^ a poem which came to him in his sleep 
as a kind of vision, he was interrupted '^ by a person 
on business from Porlock," and that on his return he 
was unable to complete it. He concludes with the 
pathetically characteristic words : *^ The author has 
frequently proposed to finish for himself what had 
been originally, as it were, given to him. Avpiov 
aSiov aaoD ; but the to-morrow is yet to come." 

We should rather attribute the smallness and in- 
completeness of his poetic work to some defect of 
character or purpose, some outside limitation w-hich 
clogged the free exercise of a great gift, than regard it 
as the result of any flaw in the quality of the gift itself. 

While in mere bulk his contribution to poetry is 
comparatively small, its intrinsic value outweighs 
all the ponderous mass of poor Southey's laborious 
epics. When Coleridge's genius works freely and 
under favorable conditions, we are captivated by a 
music that places him with the lyrical masters of the 
literature, and impressed by the sense of his absolute 
originality of tone. His descriptions of nature are 
often condensed and vivid, like those of Dante, show- 
ing the power to enter into the spirit of a scene and 

reproduce it with a few quick strokes : 

■ » • ■ ' 

*' The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out ; 

At one stride comes the dark."* 

In some poems, indeed, he seems to follow in the 
track of Wordsworth, but in Christabel^ The Aiicieyit 
Mariner^ and Kuhla Khan^ he stands alone. There 
have been many poets of the supernatural ; but 

* TJie Ancient Mariner. 



332 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

one province of the land of visions Coleridge rules as 
his demesne, and 

•* Within that circle none durst walk but he."* 

Tht Ancient Mariner is connected with that re- 
vival of interest in native ballad poetry which was 
one phase of romanticism. Xot only is 
SilSnet/''^''^ it a ballad in form ; it is filled with 
those ghostly and mysterious elements 
which, in a cruder shape, enter so largeh' into the 
folk-song and legend of primitive superstition. Such 
elements were congenial to certain writers of the 
romantic school, both in Germany and England, 
representing as they did the ^^Renaissance of AVon- 
der," f the reaction against the matter-of-fact and 
rational spirit of the preceding period. In both The 
Ancient Mariner and Christabel the ghostly and the 
horrible lose much of that gross and physical terror 
which the ordinary literature of superstition is con- 
tent with calling forth, Coleridge's more subtle art 
brings us into a twilight and debatable region which 
seems to hover between the unseen and the seen, the 
conjectural and the real. He invests us with name- 
less terrors, as w^hen we fear to turn because of a 
fiendish something that treads behind. 

We are also to observe the skill with which this 
supernatural element is woven into a narrative of 
possible incidents, so realistically told as fully to 
persuade us of their truth. By such means Cole- 
ridge has carried out his professed object, and almost 

* ** Prologue to the Tempest."— Dry den. 
+ The phrase of Theodore Watts. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 333 

deluded us into a temporary belief in the whole 
story. 

Coleridge has thus created a new thing out of the 
crude materials of vulgar superstition, but in doing 
this he has employed other agencies 
than tliose already named. In his shad- significance 
owy world, as in that of Hawthorne, we °^ ^^® poem, 
are haunted by the continual suggestion of some 
underlying moral significance. How far we should 
attempt to confine the spiritual suggestiveness of 
The Ancient Mariner within the limits of a set 
moral is open to question. To do this may seem to 
some like taking the poem out of its twiliglit atmos- 
phere to drag it into the light of common day. Yet 
we can hardly fail to feel that Coleridge has here 
written for us the great poem of charity, that " very 
bond of peace and of all virtues" which sljould bind 
together all created things. It is against this law of 
love that the mariner sins. He wantonly kills a 
creature that has trusted him, that has loved him, 
that has partaken of the sailors' food and come at 
their call. The necessary penalty for this breach in 
the fellowship of living things is an exclusion from 
that fellowship. His " soul " is condemned to dwell 
alone, until by his compassion for the " happy living 
things" about the ship — by the renewal of that love 
against which he has sinned — he takes the first step 
toward his return into the great brotherhood of 
animate creation. For hatt, or wanton cruelty, is 
the estranging power which, by an inevitable law, 
forces a man into spiritual exile, just as love is 
the uniting power which draws together all living 



334 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATURE 

tlungs. The very power to pray depends upon our 
dwelling in this mystic fellowship of charity, and in 
the poem praying and loving are constantly asso- 
ciated. (See verses 14 and 15 in part iv., also 22 and 
23 in part vii.) 

The underlying meaning in tliis becomes apparent 
in that verse which gives us the completest state* 
ment of the thought of the poem : 

** He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us. 
He made and loveth all." 

The last couplet gives us the reason for the declara 
tion contained in the first. Not only is love the bond 
between all created things — it is the bond also be- 
tween the Creator and his creatures. It is the 
mysterious, underlying principle of creation because 
it is the essence of its Creator, and an outcast through 
his violation of love here is no longer able to 
approach the source of all love. For the loneliness 
of the mariner does not consist in his loss of human 
sj^mpathy merely ; he seems to drift on that strange 
sea of isolation almost beyond the power of the 
Universal Love : 

*' So lonely 'twas that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be." 

Looked at from this aspect, The Ancient Mariner 
becomes the profoundest and perhaps most beautiful 
expression of that feeling of sympathy for all living 
things which Ave have found uttering itself with 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 335 

increasing distinctness in later eighteenth -century 
literature. 

But Coleridge's place as a poet is far from resting 
entirely on his poems of the supernatural. Like 
Wordsworth, although not perhaps so instinctively 
and habitually, he sees in nature the outward mani- 
festation of a divine energy, and God is the '^ all- 
conscious presence of the Universe." But he real- 
izes, as Wordsworth did not appear to do, that to 
each man nature is but what his mood or his power 
of spiritual apprehension makes her. To the dulled 
or jaundiced eye tlie world is obscured or discolored; 
we endow nature ^vith that joy which is within our 
own souls, or darken her fairest scenes with the pall 
of our sorrow, so that we receive from her "but 
what we give." * In the philosophical element of 
Coleridge's maturer poems we recognize the influence 
of that idealistic thought of contemporary Germany 
which was but the philosophic form of the rebound 
from the materialism of an earlier time. 

As he watched the promise of the French Revolu- 
tion depart in the license and frenzy of the Reign of 
Terror, Coleridge, like Wordsworth and 

Southev, abandoned his youthful hopes ^s poet of 

" ' " ^ man. 

for a settled conservatism. Burke had 

written at the opening of the Revolution " that the 

effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do 

what they please ; we ought to see what it will 

please them to do before we risk congratulations 

* ** Dejection ; an Ode." For this view of nature see tliin 
poem and contrast it with Wordsworth's " Expostulation and 
Reply." 



336 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

which may be soon turned into complaints,'' * Seven 
years later, during which he had looked on at the 
murderous riot of a nation from which all external 
forces of control had been suddenly withdrawn, Cole- 
ridge reaches in his " France " a similar conclusion* 
He sees that true liberty must rest upon obedience to 
a moral law, that the only foundation for the im- 
provement of society is the improvement of the 
individual, without which a so-called liberty may but 
hand men over to the tyranny of evil habits and 
desires. 

" The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 
Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game 
They burst their manacles and wear the name 
Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain." f 

In this conviction, that liberty is obedience to the, 
highest, Coleridge is one with Wordsworth and with 
John 'Ruskin, the daring and impassioned social 
reformer of our own day. 

STUDY LIST 
GOLEBIDGE 

1. Poems of the Supernatural, {a) The Ancient 
Mariner. For accounts of the way in which tlie poem came 
to be written, sources of the story, etc. , v. Memoirs of William 
Woi'dswortJi, by Christopher Wordsworth, D. D.; Coleridge's 
Biograj)hia Liter aria ^ chap, xiv.; Hales' Longer English 
Pcmns, notes on Ancient Mariner ; Brandl's Life of Coleridge, 
p. 179 ; De Quincey's Spanish Military Nun, sec. 17. 

Why did Coleridge write ** It is an Ancient Mariner," 
rather than *' TJiere is," etc. ? Cf. opening of " Friar of Orders 

* Burke, Reflections on French Revolution. 

t Coleridge, *' France ; an Ode." 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 337 

Gray/' '' Wreck of the Hesperus," etc., etc. Give other 
examples of use of this form. Why should a weddiDg guest 
have been selected by Coleridge as the person to hear the 
Mariner's story ? Point out any points of connection between 
The Ancient Mariner and certain contemporary social or 
literary conditions. What sentiment has the poem last 
mentioned in common with the following : Wordsworth's 
''Hart-leap Well" ; Burns* *' To a Mouse,'* and ''On Scaring 
Some Water-fowl," etc. ? Cite other poems, written in or 
before this time, expressing this same sentiment, and give 
contemporary instances which show its presence outside of 
literature. Find passage in Coleridge's ** Wanderings of 
Cain," where the bond of fellowship between man and the 
animals is broken by the entrance of sin. In what novel of 
Hawthorne's is this situation strongly brought out ? 

Has The Ancient Mariner any definite purpose ? Discuss 
idea of its meaning suggested on p. 278 et seq., and look up 
similar or other interpretations. 

(5) Christabel; v. Brandl's Coleridge, p. 206 et seq. 

(c) Kubla KJian. Discuss Coleridge's general treatment 
of supernatural in above poems. Cf. use of supernatural in 
old ballads, as *'The Master of Weemyss," Motherwell's 
Ancient Minstrelsy, i. 176 ; treatment in Scott's Lay of tlie Last 
Minstrel, etc.; German Romantic ballads, etc., etc. 

2. Poems Relating to the French Revolution. De- 
struction of the Bastile. To a Young Lady, with Poems on the 
French Bewlution 1792 ; France, an Ode. Cf poems of Words- 
worth and others relating to same subject. 

8. Personal and Lyrical. * * Youth and Age ; " * * Com- 
plaint and Reproof ; " ** Work Without Hope ; " " Dejection : 
an Ode." 

4. Prose Poem. The Wanderings of Cain, 

5. For Coleridge's Prose, the reader is recommended to 
Professor H. A. Beers' Selections from the Prose Writings oj 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Holt & Co. 

6. Lives of Coleridge. Cottle's Reminiscences of Coleridge 
and Southey is written from the standpoint of persona] 
intimacy. 



338 INTRODUCTIOK TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Traill's Coleridge, English Men of Letters Series, and Caine*S 
Coleridge, Great Writers Series, are good lives. 

Johnson's Three Americans and Three Englnhmen, 
Lowell's Democracy and Other Addresses, and Brandl's Cole- 
ridge may also be consulted. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narra- 
tive of the Events of his Life, by James Dykes Campbell, is the 
latest work on the subject (1894). 

SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1771-1832 

The new interest in the Middle Ages, and in the 
ballad poetry and folk-song of England, finds its 
greatest interpreter in both the poetry and prose of 
the author of the Waverley Novels, who remained 
for so long a time " The Great Unknown." 

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 
1771. He took a genuine pride in the fact that he 
came of *' gentle folk," and traces, in his Auto- 
hiogrctphy^ his lineal descent from that ancient chief, 
Auld Watt of Harden, " whose name I have made to 
ring in many a Border ditty, and from his fair dame, 
the Flower of Yarrow ; no bad genealogy for a 
Border Minstrel." * 

His father, for whom Walter was named, was by 
profession a Writer to the Signet (attorney). His 
mother was Anne Rutherford, daughter of a dis- 
tinguished physician of Edinburgh. Walter seems 
to have been a most engaging child, and a great 
favorite with his elders, who were ready to tell him 
the stories of local legend in which he delighted. 

* See Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. i. chap. i. Consult also 
Lady of the Lake, cant. v. verse 7, supposed to be a description 
of Scott's border ancestry. 




SIR WALTER SCOTT 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITER ATUBE 839 

He thus came to know the past of his country as he 
only knows it who learns it, not from books, but from 
the rural depositories of tradition. So Darsie Latimer, 
in Redgauntlet^ heard from the lips of Wandering 
Willie the marvelous tales of his ancient house. 

Much of Scott's childhood was spent in the country 
at Sandy Knowe, and here he was in familiar inter- 
course with the country people. He sat at their 
firesides, listening to scraps of old ballads and quaint 
songs, stories of Border feuds and Scotch supersti- 
tions, anecdotes of the great risings of 1715 and 1745. 
He thus laid, deep in his wonderful memory, the 
foundations of that knowledge which he was to put 
into the best setting. 

By his genial and embracing sympathy, he, as it 
were, was able to absorb Scotland herself, the out- 
ward aspect of her valleys, glens, and lochs, her 
towns, her fishing villages and hamlets, her people's 
life, her history, spirit, and tradition, and lift them, 
by the simple force of his imaginative and poetic 
art, into the unchanging region of literature. 

Scott was admitted a member of the faculty of 
advocates in 1792. He obtained the ofiice of Sheriff- 
depute of Selkirkshire in 1799, and in 1806 that of 
clerk of the session in reversion. He entered upon 
the emoluments of this last in 1812, and from that 
time was in receipt of an income of £1600 a year 
from these two offices. He discharged these duties 
for twenty-five years with great fidelity, and the 
income therefrom enabled him to make of literature 
" a staff and not a crutch," as he was fond of saying. 
But, be the motive what it may, we can scarcely 



340 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

imagine more constant and rapid work than Scott 
accomplished during the period between January, 
1805, the date of the publication of The Lay of The 
Last Minstrel^ and 1831, the year in which he wrote 
the last of his great series of novels. From 1825, 
when money difficulties came upon him, he worked 
tremendously to clear himself from debt. The story 
of this struggle is a very familiar one, and its full 
details have become clearer to the world since the 
publication, in 1890, of Sir Walter's Journal. No 
one can read the private record of that brave fight, 
saddened by domestic loss, by failing health, yet 
courageously maintained until the last, without being 
moved to a depth of reverent admiration and affection 
for Scott's own personal character ; without amaze- 
ment at his marvelous power over himself and over 
his pen. At last the struggle ended. After his 
return ,from a Continental tour, taken in the vain 
hope of restoring health to mind and body, he died 
peacefully in his home at Abbotsford, September 21, 
1832, surrounded by his children and faithful depend- 
ents. He was buried in Dryburgh Abbey. 

Scott possessed in a remarkable degree the rare 
power of grasping life, as it were, with the bare 

hand ; of learning by a shrewd insight 
Scott 3 j^^^ men's lives, and bv a healthy fellow- 

ship with Nature in all her moods. With 
this faculty, he had the gift of telling what he saw. 
In English literature, Chaucer had this power, 
Spenser had not : Shakespeare is the supremest 
instance of it in any literature, while in Milton it is 
somparativelj absent. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 341 

The distinctive features of the poetry of Scott arc 
ease, rapidity of movement, a spirited flow of narra 
tive that holds our attention, an out-of- 
doors atmosphere and power of natural 
description, an occasional intrusion of a gentle per- 
sonal sadness ; and but little more. The subtle and 
mystical element, so characteristic of the poetry of 
Wordsworth and Coleridge, is not to be found in 
that of Scott, while in lyrical power he does not 
approach Shelley. We find instead an intense sense 
of reality in all his natural descriptions ; it surrounds 
them with an indefinable atmosphere, because they 
are so transparently true. Scott's first impulse in 
the direction of poetry was given him from the study 
of the German ballads, especially Burger's Lenore^ of 
which he made a translation. As his ideas widened, 
he wished to do for Scottish Border life what Goethe 
had done for the ancient feudalism of the Rhine. 
He was at first undecided whether to choose prose or 
verse as his medium, but a legend was sent him by 
the Countess of Dalkeith, w^ith a request that he 
would put it in ballad form. Having thus the frame- 
work for his purpose, he w^ent to work, and T/ie Lay 
of the Last Minstrel was the result. ** It became at 
once extremely popular, and w^e are told that " Scott 
was astonished at his own success." This induced 
him to make literature his profession, and by 1813 he 
had published Marmion^ The Lady of the Lake, and 

* Coleridge's poem of Cliristabel was the immediate inspira- 
tion of this poem. Scott says, "It is to Mr. Coleridge I am 
bound to make the acknowledgment due from a pupil to l)is 
master." 



342 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

MoJcehy, The battle scene in Marmion has been 
called the most Homeric passage in modern literatui'e, 
and his description of " The Battle of Beal an Duine," 
in The Lady of the Lake is an exquisite piece of 
narration from the gleam of the spears in the thicket 
to the death of Roderick Dhu at its close. In the 
deepest sense Scott is one with the spirit of his time 
in his grasp of fact, in that looking steadily at the 
object, which Wordsworth had fought for in poetry, 
and which Carlyle has advocated in his philosophy. 
He is allied, too, to that broad sympathy for man 
which lay closest to the heart of the age's literary 
expression. Wordsworth's part is to inspire an 
interest in the lives of men and women about us ; 
Scott's, to enlarge the bounds of our sympathy beyond 
the present and to people the silent centuries, 
Shelley's inspiration is hope for the future ; Scott's is 
revereace for the past. 

Scott wrote twenty-three novels m fourteen years. 
He wrote them during the faithful discharge of the 

duties of his profession, among the pres- 

As a novelist. i* ^ - • x* t • -^ i? 

sure or busmess anxieties, and m spite of 

all, found time for the exercise of a most charming 
and open-hearted hospitality to all who sought his 
friendship. He may be said to have created the his- 
torical novel. Fielding and others had excelled in the 
portrayal of daily life and manners, and, as we have 
already seen, there were writers who had attempted 
in fiction the romantic and the marvelous, but only 
Shakespeare himself had so reanimated historical 
characters with the spirit of life and action that they 
seem to be once more in living presence among us, 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATUBE 343 

Scott stands alone in that branch of literary work. 
Others liave made, it may be, one great success in the 
novel of history ; such as Thackeray in Henry Es- 
mond^ George Eliot in Romola, and Robert Louis 
Stevenson in The Master of Ballantrae ; but Scott 
has brought alike the times of the Crusaders and of 
the Stuarts before us ; he lias peopled the land of 
Palestine and the hills of Scotland, the forests of 
England and the borders of the Rhine, for our edifi- 
cation and delight. Paladin and peasant, earl and 
yeoman, kings and their jesters, bluff men-at-arms 
and gentle bower maidens, all spring into life again 
at the touch of the "Great Enchanter." How bare 
would be our mental pictures of Queen Elizabeth 
were we deprived of the scenes in KenilwortJi in 
which she stands before us alive forever in her wrath, 
as Leicester's injured queen, or yielding to those 
more womanly touches of feeling as she listens to the 
. sympathy of her women or of her '* Cousin Hunsdon." 
The wonderful charm which the unfortunate Queen of 
Scots had for all who approached her would be harder 
to realize were it not that, as we read The Ahhot^ 
we too succumb for a while to its power, and feel 
that, wdth Roland Graeme, we could die for her, 
right or wrong. There is no doubt that Scott is 
often historically inaccurate. He takes liberties, as 
did his great master Shakespeare, with place and 
with facts ; but he has the power to humanize for us 
the people about whom he writes ; he puts a spirit 
and a soul into the dry facts of history, and gives 
them by his imagination the very breath of life. 
History alone hardly helps us to realize the burning 



344 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

zeal felt by the Crusaders for the recovery of tlie 
Holy Sepulcher, or the general detestation of the Jew 
in England, as else\Yhere on the Continent. We 
must go to The Talisman and Ivanhoe to learn what 
it was to journey with Kenneth and Saladin over the 
desert ; to feast as did the Black Knight with Robin 
Hood in Sherwood Forest, and to feel our hearts 
thrill with the outlaws as we do homage to Richard 
of the Lion Heart. But it is not only in the field of 
hi'Story that the ^' magic wand" has power. In the 
novel of simple daily life, in a time nearer to Scott's 
own day, he is perhaps even happier in his vivid pic- 
tures. Nowhere has he more touchingh^ portrayed 
the life of Scotland's people than in The Heart of 
Midlothioji^ that story so dear to Scottish men and 
women. Here Scott touches both extremes ; the 
Queen and the Duke of Argyle, and the lowly peas- 
ant maiden, strong in her cause and in her truth ; 
and what a picture is their meeting ! 

When we review, therefore, the enormous range 
and the hio:h averaofe excellence of Scott's work in 
fiction, and remember the ease and rapidity with 
which it was produced, we feel that he exhibits a 
creative force rare even among the great geniuses of 
the literature. 

Scott's sense of humor was keen, and his own enjoy- 
ment of it cannot be doubted. Many scenes in Red- 
gaimtlet^ The Antiquary^ or Old Mortality^ are full 
of genuine fun ; and the character of Caleb Balder- 
stone, in The Bride of Laniinennoor^ is unsurpassed 
of its kind. 

Scott works in the primary colorSc He is not iii' 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 345 

tense, he does not question deeply, or analyze motives. 

He does not excel in that morbid anat- 

. _ _ - Suinixi&rT* 

tomy of emotion which has become the 

fashion with many novelists of this present age of 

so-called superior culture and advanced ideas. He 

thinks that life is good, and that there is wholesome 

enjoyment to be gained from action. He admires 

honor and courtesy and bravery among men, and 

beauty and gentleness and modesty among women. 

The greatness and the goodness of Scott must ever 

appeal to us, the charm and glow of his verse delight 

us. The Waverley Novels are the splendid witness of 

the breadth, sympathy, and purity of one of the 

great creative intellects of our literature, worthy, 

indeed, of a place among the immortals, side by side 

with Chaucer and nearest to the feet of Shakespeare 

himself, 

STUDY LIST 

SIB WALTER SCOTT 

[The reader of Scott requires neither lists of reconi mended 
works nor helps to study ; any right-minded person does not 
need encouragement, he will simply go on and enjoy. It is 
almost equally unnecessary to obtrude any list for school pur- 
poses ; the chief difficulty being the great wealth from which 
to select. A few poems are, however, given as among the most 
appropriate ; the novels will probably be relegated, at any rate, 
to outside reading.] 

1. TJie Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of 
the Lake. 

2. Shorter Poems. ** Cadyow Castle," given with notes in 
Hales' Longer English Poems. The songs may be picked out 
from the poems and ta^en as a separate study, or see TJie Lync^ 



346 INTBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and Ballads of Sir Walter Scott y edited by Andrew Lang. 
[The editor's Introduction is most spirited and delightful.] 

3. Biography and Criticism. Lockhart's Life of Scott, 3 
vols., and Scotfs Journal, are the best authorities ; the short 
lives of Scott are unsatisfactory. Carlyle's Essay on Scott may 
be read as much for the light it throws on Carlyle's limitations 
as for its view of Scott, which in places is open to serious 
criticism. .3 See also Oliphant's Literary History of England, 
and Shairp's Aspects of Poetry, pp. 133, 194. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. — 1785-1859 

Thomas De Quincey impresses us as some being 
from another planet, who never entirely domesticated 
. himself on our earth. We picture him 

and char- as an alien creature, gliding timorously 
®^* and obscurely among the mass of ordi- 

nary men, remote himself from their lives and ambi- 
tions/ yet observing them with the curiosity of a 
stranger and retiring to meditate upon the meaning 
of their acts and ways. Even his appearance had 
something eccentric and elfish. He is described by 
those who knew him as frail, withered, and diminu- 
tive (he was scarcely more than five feet high), his 
garments often strangely assorted, his face lined with 
innumerable wrinkles, gathered " thickly around the 
curiously expressive and subtle lips." * But the 
forehead was lofty, the eyes deep-set and gentle ; for 
this fragile little body w^as the house of an acute and 

* For descriptions of De Quincey, see the account of "Papa- 
verius " in The Book Hunter, by J. H. Burton; Personal Becol 
lections of De Quincey, by J. R. Findlay, and 3tttSSon's Dt 
Quincey in English Men of Letters Series. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 347 

unwearying intellect, stored with curious spoils from 
a lifetime of varied reading. 

The strangeness of his way of living sets him still 
more apart from other men. He was an opium-eater, 
a philosopher, with the impassive, deeply contempla- 
tive spirit of an Oriental ; much of his life slipped 
away in dreams. His "natural inclination to a soli- 
tary life " was fostered and increased by the use of 
that terrible drug, which admitted him to the dream- 
life of those trances, to that inward life of vision, he 
has so vividly described. At times he came out into 
the light and mixed with his kind, but he seems to 
have required solitude for the shaping and perfecting 
of his thought. " No man," he writes, " will ever 
unfold the capacities of his own intellect, who does 
not at least chequer his life with solitude. How much 
solitude so much power, "^^ * 

An acquaintance with De Quincey's life but 
deepens our impression of him as an eccentric 
dreamer and recluse. We read of his morbid dread 
of being pursued, we follow him in his solitary wan- 
derings, and see him haunting the streets of Edin- 
burgh, when the town is asleep, thinking his own 
unimaginable thoughts. Tiie true life of De Quin- 
cey is that wonderful inner life of thought and 
vision into which we cannot penetrate; the outward 
events of his singular history must be here passed 
over with the merest mention. Thomas 
life ^^^^^^ De Quincey was the son of a merchant 
of literary tastes, and was born in Man- 
chester in 1785. His father died when De Quincey 
was in his seventh year. His mother appears to have 
* Suspiria De Profundis: " Dreaming." 



348 INTHOBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

been a woman of high character and intelligence, 
but inclined to be over-rigid and unsympathetic. He 
early distinguished himself in the classics, becoming 
famous for his Latin verses, and being able, it is said, 
to converse easily in Greek at fifteen. He ran away 
from the Manchester Grammar School, to which he 
had been sent in 1800, finding the commercial air of 
the town '* detestable," and the life of the school 
uncongenial and monotonous. After some months of 
wandering in North Wales he made his way to Lon» 
don, where he passed about a year in an aimless, 
vagrant existence; haunting the streets and city 
parks, and coming in contact with the darker side of 
the great capital. Having become reconciled to his 
family, he was sent to Worcester College, Oxford, in 
1803, where he remained for five years. It was dur- 
ing his stay at Oxford that he began the use of opium; 
taking it, however, in moderation as an occasional 
means of mental exhilaration. He also began a more 
systematic study of German and English literature, 
his young enthusiasm fastening especially on Words- 
worth and Coleridge, whom he recognized as having, 
in his own time, restored the ancient greatness of 
English poetry. He longed to know Coleridge per- 
sonally, and in 1807 succeeded in meeting him at 
Bristol, making the acquaintance of Wordsworth 
later in the same year. After leaving Oxford (1809), 
he settled near Wordsworth in the Lake District at 
Town End, Grasmere. Except for occasional inter- 
vals this continued to be his home for over twenty 
years. Here he enjoyed the friendship of the 
** Lakists," espeeially Coleridge ; pored over German 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 349 

metaphysics, and indulged his passion for walking. 
In 1813, being "attacked by a most appalling iirita- 
tion of the stomach," he greatly increased his use of 
opium, bringing down upon himself those terrible 
experiences which he has preserved for us in his 
Confessions, In 1816 he married a young country 
girl, Margaret Simpson, whose father owned a 
neighboring farm. He began to be embarrassed 
for money, and after reducing his supply of opium 
by desperate efforts, he became the editor of a 
provincial journal. His literary career 
really began, however, in 1821, with the fiterat""^^^^^ 
appearance, in the London Magazine^ 
of his Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 
Tlie novelty of the subject, the unsparing frankness 
of these self-revelations, and, we may assume, their 
wonderful style and poetic imagery, secured for tlie 
new writer an immediate success. From this time 
De Quincey was distinctively a writer for magazines, 
being connected during the forty j^ears of his literary 
life with Blackwood? s Magazine^ Taifs Magazine, 
Hogg'^s Weekly Instructor, and others. His first 
contribution to Blackwood^s, a translation of Less- 
ing's Laocoon, appeared in 1826, and his relations 
with that magazine led to his settling in Edinburgh in 
1830. He lived in various lodging-houses in the town 
itself, or in a cottage in the outskirts at Lasswade ; a 
shy, obscure scholar, full of a winning grace and 
charm ; a marvelous talker when he was in the 
mood ; a lover of children ; with all his oddities, a 
man of gentle and affectionate nature. The most 
important of De Quincey's last labors was the editing 



350 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of a collected edition of his works which began to 
appear in 1853.* For the last two years of his life 
his strength was failing ; the complete edition of his 
works was nearly finished when he was taken with 
his last illness, and died on the 8th of December, 
1859. 

In actual years De Quincey was just halfway be- 
tween Wordsworth and Macaulay, atid the fact is 
suggestive of his general relation to literary history. 
De ' ce Early admiration and personal friendship 
as man of connect him with Wordsworth and his 
et ers. great contemporaries. His aifinity with 
Coleridge is especially close, and with Coleridge 
he was instrumental in bringing German literature 
and philosophy into England. On the other hand, 
he is associated with the rise of the new periodical 
literature, and in that movement Macaulay had an 
important place. Although De Quincey was fifteen 
years Macaulay's senior, the two men became con- 
tributors to the periodicals almost at the same time, for 
De Quincey was thirty-six when he published his Con- 
fessi07is, and Macaulay but twenty-five when, three 
years later, his " Milton " appeared in the Edinburgh 
Heview. De Quincey, therefore, while near in many 
ways to Wordsworth and Coleridge, is the immediate 
predecessor of the two great essayists, Macaulay and 
Carlyle. With Lamb, Hazlitt, Jeffrej^, and Sydney 

* The first collected edition of De Quincey was published 
by Ticknor & Fields (now Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), and ap- 
peared in 1851-52. De Quincey furnished Mr. J. T. Fields, 
under whose supervision the work appeared, with some assist 
ance for this edition. 



THE BEGINNING OE MODERN LITERATURE 351 

Smith, De Quincey belongs to that group of essay- 
writers who were making an era in criticism. De 
Quincey 's relation to this rising periodical literature 
may be compared to that which Addison held to the 
journals of his time, but between the work of the 
two essayists there is a difference, suggestive of the 
century of growth that lies between. De Quincey's 
essays are longer and more elaborate than those of 
Addison; more learned, often more impassioned and 
poetic, and above all, they have a greater diversity 
of subject and of style. This diversity may be due in 

part to the widening: interests and s^row- 

r 1 . . .1 -,. ^, ,. His diversity. 

ing cultivation oi the reading public, 

but it is more directly and naturally attributable to 
the many-sidedness of De Quincey himself. He was 
at the same time a born student and book-lover and 
a close and inquisitive observer of life. He delighted 
in intellectual subtleties and fine-drawn analysis, and 
yet possessed all that passion for style, that pleasure 
of the artist in effects of word-melodj^, which is em- 
phatically the endowment of the poet. Although 
these varied elements of De Quincey's genius are 
constantly intermingled in a single essay, yet one or 
the other of them commonly predominates, according 
to the nature of the subject, sometimes to the entire 
exclusion of the rest. Thus the reminiscences of the 
Lake poets, or the autobiographical sketches, are, for 
the most part, the outcome of De Quincey's power 
to observe ; his essays on such widely separated 
subjects as theology, political economy, Greek poetry, 
English politics, and German metaphysics, attest the 
range of his scholarship ; while still other sides of 



852 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

his nature are revealed in the fantastic humor of his 
Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, in the 
narrative skill of The Might of a Tartar Tribe, or in 
the prose-poetry of his Levana and Our Ladies of 
Sorrow. And in the essays, the style, adapting itself 
to the subject, ranges from simple, unadorned expo- 
sition to impassioned apostrophes, or delicately 
modulated strains of melody^ filled with a dim and 
HisT)lace visionary beauty, which, like the influ- 
in English ence of poetry, evades the last analj^sis. 
prose. This change, from the plainer and less 

inspired prose of tlie eighteenth-century essayists to 
De Quincey's more highly wrought and emotional 
manner, is analogous to that which had taken place 
in poetry at a somewhat earlier period. The differ- 
ence between Addison and De Quincey is comparable 
to that between Pope and Collins, or Coleridge. 
Moreover, De Quincey shares with some latter eight- 
eenth-century poets the tendency to skip over his 
immediate predecessors and take for his models 
Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, and the great 
masters of the yet earlier times.* Each of De Quin- 
cey's great successors in the history of English prose 
has added, in his own way, to its resources and capa- 
bilities ; each has, perhaps, surpassed him in certain 
directions, yet he maintains undisturbed his suprem- 
acy in that "visionary dreamland," in which, says 
Leslie Stephen, " he is unrivaled." f 

The appreciation of the peculiar flavor of De 

* V. Leslie Stephen's ** Life of De Quincey" in Dictionary 
of National Biography, 
\lhid. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 353 

Quincey's writings must be gained from the sympa- 
thetic reading of his works. His Murder Considered 
as One of the Fine Arts is not a tragic 
masterpiece like Swift's Modest Pro- J^^^g''''^^'' 
posal^ with which it is usually compared, 
but, lacking the stifled wrath and pity which under- 
lie that terrible arraignment, it is more buoyantly 
humorous, unweiglited by the revolting elements 
which give to Swift's satire a painful and hideous 
incongruity. When De Quincey leaves his "admi* 
rable fooling," with its playful irony on the cant of 
aesthetic criticism, to tell the story of certain " mem- 
orable murders," the style becomes more simple and 
serious, and we come under the spell of his wonder- 
ful power of narrative. Then, as in The Flight of a 
Tartar Tribe, or the murder story of The Avenger^ 
we feel that this great essayist was, within the brief 
limits he set himself, a master of the art of story- 
writing. But it is when De Quincey invades the 
province of the poet or of the musician, that his work 
becomes most distinctive. In his " dream-fugues," or 
dream-fantasies, he seems less anxious to impart 
certain definite ideas than to produce a positive 
emotional impression by the effect of his composition 
as a whole. Thus in parts of his Confessions of an 
English Opium Eater ^ or his Suspiria de Profundis, 
as in his Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death, 
his appeal is not primarily to the understanding. 
And so marvelous is the power of melodious utter- 
ance, of imagery which excites and expands the 
imagination by its very vagueness, of words steeped 
in the odors of association, that De Quincey achieves 



354 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LlTEEATURl 

this emotional effect with but little aid from exact 

thought. 

Perhaps, on the whole, it is as a master of rhetoric 

that De Quincey is most admirable. Like a skillful 

organist he knows all the stops and com- 
His style. , . . /. i • t /» i • 

bmations ot his wonderful instrument ; 

yet so skillful is he that at times our attention 
wanders from the theme in our admiration of the 
dexterity of the performer. Even in dealing with 
such a subject as the story of Joan of Arc, conse- 
crated beyond all the artifices of rhetoric by pathos, 
nobility, and wonder, he is able to indulge in pass- 
ages, which, brilliant as they are as bits of rhetorical 
" bravura," are apt to impress us as a tour de force. 
This careful elaboration of the style tends to leave 
us admiring, but cold. Professor Masson remarks 
that the motive force in De Quincey was intellectual 
rather than moral, and the distinction explains that 
touch of self-consciousness, that lack of the highest 
earnestness and sincerity which at times we instinc- 
tively recognize in his work. Thackeray's loving- 
kindness and compassion, Carlyle's ardent singleness 
of purpose, when he is truest to himself, are the 
expressions of moral qualities, and those writers 
move us as De Quincey does not, because we respond 
to the language of a profounder and more genuine 
emotion. " From my birth," says De Quincey, *' I was 
made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the 
highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been." 

While this preponderance of the intellectual over 
the more purely moral side acts as a limitation on De 
Quincey^s power to satisfy all our needs, few English 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 355 

prose writers are more worthy of study. Delightful 
in his humor, fascinating in his narrative, wonderful 
in the intricate perfection of his sentences, influential 
as the reviver of an impassioned and musically modu- 
lated style, De Quincey has taken his place among 
the great masters of English prose. 



STUDY LIST 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 

1. The following essays may be had in convenient form in 
the Selections from De Quincey, by Henry H. Belfield (Leach, 
Shewell & Sanborn): "Joan of Arc," "The English Mail 
Coach'' (Abridged), " Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow'* 
(taken from the Suspiria de Proficndis), and *' Dinner, Real or 
Reputed " (Abridged). The Confessions of an English Opium- 
Eater has been recently published (1896), with introduction and 
notes by Mark Houston (Bell's English Glassies). The papers 
on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts are of course in- 
dispensable in any study of De Quincey, not only as examples of 
irony and humor, but as containing superb narrative passages. 
A most charming example of De Quincey's humor will be 
found in the third chapter of the Autobiography ; The Flight 
of a Tartar Tribe (cheap school edition, American Book Co.). 

2. Biography and Criticism. — Thomas De Quincey ; His 
Life and Writings, with Unpublished Correspondence, by Alex- 
ander H. Japp (H. A. Page), 2 vols., 1881. De Quincey 
Memorials, Being Letters and Other Records, here First Pub- 
lisJied, etc. ; edited with Introductions, Notes, and Narrative, 
by Alexander H. Japp (H. A. Page), 1891. A shorter and 
very excellent life of De Quincey has been written by Pro- 
fessor Masson for the English Men of Letters Series. The 
author had the advantage of having met De Quincey in 
Edinburgh. Some personal details are also to be found in 
^wtXoti!^ B9ok Hunter, where Dg Qulticey is described in the 



356 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 

essay '/ A Vision of Mighty Book Hunters/' under the name 
of *'Papaverius (the Opium-Eater) " ; in Ohristopher Worth, 
A Memoir of John Wilson, by Mrs. Gordon ; and in the 
Jrersonal BecoUections of Be Quincey, by J. R. Findlay. Leslie 
Stephen's essay on " De Quincey" in Hours in a Library, 
(First Series), is valuable, but inclined to be severe and unsym- 
pathetic ; v., also, his article on " De Quincey " in the Dic- 
tionary of National Biography. For study and analysis ofDe 
Quincey's style, v. Minto's Manual of English Brose and T. W. 
Hunt's English Brose and Brose Writers. 

CHAELES LAMB. — 1775-1834 

Charles Lamb — called by Coleridge the "gentle- 
hearted Charles"* — was born in London, 1775. He 
was the youngest of three children ; his family 
were in poor circumstances, his father being little 
more than a servant to a Mr. Salt of the Inner 
Temple. From his eighth to his fifteenth year, 
Charles studied as a "blue-coat boy" at Christ's 
Hospital, and here there sprung up between him and 
his fellow-student Coleridge a friendship which 
proved lifelong. On leaving school he obtained a 
clerkship in the South Sea House, and two years 
later in the India Office. His father's health failed, 
and Charles became the chief support of the little 
family. But the quiet of their household was soon 
broken by a terrible event. Mary, Charles Lamb's 
sister, was seized with violent insanitj^, and killed 
their mother (1796). Mary was taken to an asylum, 
where she recovered, and Charles procured her release 
on his becoming responsible for her guardianship. 

* See Coleridge's poem, * * This Lime Tree BoWef my Prison/' 
in which several references to Lamb occur, 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 357 

Thenceforth, after his father's death, he devoted 
himself to the care of his aflSicted sister. For inter- 
vals, which he called '' between the acts," they lived 
quietly in the most devoted companionship, Mary 
aiding in her brother's literary work, and presiding 
at their little receptions, which Coleridge arni 
sometimes Wordsworth attended. Then, again, 
Mary would " fall ill," and return for a time to the 
asylum. 

Through all this strain and distress, and occasional 
fears for himself. Lamb's cheerful and loving nature 
saved him from bitterness and despair, and he found 
courage to work. He lived his '' happy-melancholy " 
life, and died quietly at London in 1834. His sister, 
whose name is forever linked with his as the object 
of his care and partner of his literary work, survived 
until 1847. 

In spite of daily work in the office, and of his 
domestic troubles. Lamb found time and heart for 
literature. As a boy he had spent many odd hours 
in the library of Mr. Salt, "browsing chiefly among 
the older English authors"; and he refers to Bridget 
Elia (Mary Lamb) as " tumbled early, by accident or 
design, into a spacious closet of good old English 
reading." This preference for Elizabethan writers 
endured through life, and their style and mode of 
thought became in some degree natural to himself. 
His -first venture was a contribution of four sonnets 
to a book of poems on various subjects by his friend 
Coleridge (1796). After some minor works, he pub* 
lished John Woodvil (1801), a tragedy on the early 
Elizabethan model, which was seVerelj^ Criticised^ fttid 



358 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

later a farce, 3f7\ H (1806), which failed on the 

first performance. 

His Specimens of English Dramatic Poets icho 
Wrote about the Time of Sha'kespeo.re^ with notes, 
aroused new interest in a great body of writers then 
largely neglected, and showed Lamb himself a critic 
of keen natural insio^ht, his sugfo-estions often beinsr 
of more value than the learned notes of commentators. 
Thus Lamb, with William Hazlitt, another critic of 
the time, helped in bringing about that new era of 
criticism in which Coleridge w^as the chief mover. 
Li 1807 appeared Tales Founded on the Plays of 
Shakespeare^ the joint work of himself and his sister 
Mary. Lamb is best known, however, by his essays, 
first published, under the name of Elia, in the London 
Magazine (founded 1S20). Written for the most part 
on trivial subjects, wath no purpose but to please, 
they bring us close to the lovable nature of the man, 
full, inSeed, of sadness, but full, too, of a refined and 
kindly humor, ready to flash out in a pun, or to light 
up with a warm and gentle glow the cloud that over- 
hangs him. In these essays we see Lamb's conserva- 
tive spirit and hatred of change. His literary 
sympathies lay with the j^ast, and he clung with 
fondness to the memories of his childhood. 

STUDY LIST 

CHARLES LAMB 

1. Essays of Elta. The following essays have been selected 
as among the most enjoyable and characteristic : ** Christ's 
Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," '' The Two Races of 
Men," ''The Old and the New Schoolmaster," *' Yalentine's 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 359 

Day/* '* Modern Gallantry," "Dream Children; a Reverie," 
"Distant Correspondents," " A Dissertation upon Roast Pig," 
" A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Married People," 
"Captain Jackson." Show from the above essays Lamb's 
fondness for the past, and his kind-heartedness. What do you 
learn from these of his own life ? Name which you consider 
the finest of the character sketches among them. How do you 
think these essays compare with those of Addison ? 

2. Ckitic AND Poet. " On the Tragedies of Shakespeare," 
'* Hester," ' * The Old Familiar Faces." Compare the spirit of 
this characteristic poem with that shown in certain of the 
Essays of Elia. 

3. Biography and Criticism. Talfourd's Final Memorials 
of Charles Lamb, Ainger's Lamb, English Men of Letters Series; 
Letters of Gharles Lamb, edited by Ainger, two volumes, 

THE LATER POETS OF THE REVOLUTION 

The appalling plunge into murder and anarchy 
which followed hard upon the triumph of the 
Revolutionists in France, shocked into a sudden 
sobriety much of the vague enthusiasm for the cause 
of man. Thousands who, like Wordsworth and 
Coleridge, had joined in the contagious outcry for 
liberty and equality, recoiled like them in disgust 
from a revolution which had brought the dregs of 
society uppermost, and cast to the surface man's prim- 
itive baseness and crueltj^ In France the towering 
genius and ambition of Napoleon were hurrying the 
nation back into despotism ; in England, the govern- 
ment set its face against sorely needed reforms, 
through an unreasoning fear that change might 
prove the invitation to a Reign of Terror. Yet the 
Revolution had none the less begun a new epoch in 
the history of England and of the Continent; in spite 
of the efforts of conservative governments, its iire» 



360 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUR^ 

still smoldered everywhere beneath the surface, ready 
at a breath to burst into flame. After the battle of 
Waterloo (1815) tlie great powers of Europe met at 
Vienna and entered into a compact known as The 
Holy Alliance, The ostensible object of this alliance 
was to promote peace and good will ; its real pur- 
pose was to crush the spirit of democracy. It would 
have blotted the Revolution out of history, by reviv- 
ing that older Europe which, in reality, no congress 
could restore. Austria, under her Prime Minister 
Metternich, threw her whole weight on the side of 
absolutism ; but demonstrations among the students 
in the German universities (1817), insurrections in 
Spain and Xaples, and the heroic struggles of the 
Greeks under Turkish oppression, showed that the 
revolutionary spirit was unextinguished. 

England was passing through a critical period of 
popular distress and dangerous discontent. On the 
one hand a government set in its conservatism ; on 
the other a people unsettled by new industrial con- 
ditions, impoverislied by over-taxation, impatient to 
gain a voice in their own government, and brought 
at length by poor crops to the verge of actual starva- 
tion. The assembling of the people for free speech 
was pronounced illegal, and at a great meeting at 
Manchester, the cavalry charged upon the crowd, and 
answered their petitions for a vote in Parliamentary 
elections with the edge of the sword (1819). A year 
later a conspiracy was formed to murder the members 
of the Cabinet. 

Four poets — Lord Byron, Percy Bygshe Shelley, 
Thomas Campbell, and Thomas Moore-^^^all born 




LORD BYRON 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 361 

during the last quarter of the preceding century, 
express in greater or less degree the spirit of this 
time. Each was, in his way, a poet of the Revolu- 
tion, a lover of liberty, a believer in progress. When 
Wordsworth and Coleridge sang their first paeans to 
Liberty, her white robes were still stainless, her fame 
unspotted. The poets of this younger group in their 
early manhood had looked on at the crimes com- 
mitted in her name; they had breathed in an atmos- 
phere heavy with the sense of failure ; they were 
confronted with an oppression and misery calculated 
to make them embittered and rebellious. 

In some respects, Lord Byron, in the power and 
brilliancy of his genius, in his audacious and dra- 
matic personality, thrusts himself forward as the 
most truly representative poet of this time. We 
see in his life and character and work a rebellious 
arraignment of life, a passionate, impotent complaint 
against the entire order of thingSo 

George Gordon Byron was born in London, Jan- 
uary 22, 1788. The same year saw the birth in 
Germany of Arthur Schopenhauer, des- 
tined to be the great preacher to modern 
times of a philosophy of despair. The Byrons, or 
Buruns, were thought to be descended from a Scandi- 
navian settler in Normandy. The family had come 
into England with the Conqueror. They were a fight- 
ing race ; we find them in the field at Crec}^, at the 
siege of Calais, at Bosworth, at Edgehill. Ungovern- 
able and proud, the spirit of the Viking seemed to 
survive in them ; and after long generations they pro- 
duced a poet. Byron reminds us of the hero in some 



362 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Greek tragedy, born to a heritage of guilt and suflfering. 
His granduncle, "the wicked lord," was convicted of 
manslaughter and, like some of his nephew's miserable 
heroes, was cast out from human society. The father 
of the poet, Captain John Byron, known as " Mad 
Jack," was a profligate and heartless spendthrift ; 
his mother, Catherine Gordon, who traced her descent 
from James I., was a silly and impulsive woman, 
subject to furious paroxysms of temper. Having 
squandered his wife's fortune, Captain Byron left her 
in greatly straitened circumstances, shortly after the 
birth of their son. The worse than fatherless child 
was tlius left wholly at the mercy of an injudicious 
and passionate woman, who treated him, according 
to her passing whims, with alternate harshness and 
over-indulgence. Under these wretched conditions 
Byron's life began. He grew up a spoiled child, 
passiopate, headstrong, sullen, and defiant. On all 
this was piled yet anotlier misery — he was lame. 
owing to the deformity of one foot ; and to his vain 
and morbidly sensitive nature this misfortune was a 
life-long torture. In 1798, by the death of ''the 
wicked lord," he succeeded to the title and family 
estates. In 1801 he entered Harrow, where lie was 
noted as a fighter, and acted as ringleader in a boyish 
rebellion against the authorities. Four years later 
he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he 
led the life of the idle and dissipated undergraduate. 
Here his " gyp," or college servant, spoke of him 
with respect as '' a young gentleman of tumultuous 
passions." In 1807 he published his first book of 
-poems^ Hoiu's of Idleness, An unfavorable review' 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE SQS 

of this youthful venture, which had in realitv but 
little merit, aroused his passionate temper, and he 
struck back fiercely in a satire on English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers (1809). Revolutionist as he was 
by nature, Byrou had a deep and genuine apprecia- 
tion of the historic greatness of Europe, and after 
two years of Continental travel (1809-1811), he 
gave the world the splendid record of his impressions 
in the first two cantos of Childe Harold (1812). Tlie 
result was one of the most sudden and memorable 
successes in English literary history ; in his own 
familiar phrase, Byron awoke one morning and found 
h\mself famous. Tlie poetic star of Scott, w^ho had 
been enchanting the world with his vigorous ballads 
of romance and chivalry, declined before the bright- 
ness of tliis new luminary. The public turned from 
tales of Border w^arfare, from the mailed knights 
and moated castles of medisevalism, to enter under 
Byron's guidance the unfamiliar regions of the East. 
The Giaour (1813) is the first of a succession of 
Eastern tales, in the meter of Scott, each of which 
increased the fever of popular enthusiasm. In these 
tales the Byron ic hero, first outlined in Childe 
Harold, reappears under different names and vary- 
ing disguises, with significant persisteiice in all his 
solitary, joyless, and misanthropic personality. 

In 1815 Byron married Miss Milbanke, but after 
about a year they separated for reasons not fully 
known. The public turned furiously upon the man 
it had so lately idolized, and overwhelmed him w^th 
its sudden condemnation. Smarting under a sense 
of injustice, Byron left England forever, pursued 



364 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

across Europe by the outcry against him. Aftei 
spending some time at Geneva under the stimulating 
influence of Sheliey, he settled at length on the 
" Waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay who 
betakes himself to the waters." During this time he 
wrote with extraordinary power and rapidity, pro- 
ducing, among a great number of other poems, the 
remaining cantos of Childe Harold^ Cain, Manfred, 
and Don Juan, At length he seemed to weary of 
poetry, as he did of everything, declaring that he did 
not consider it his " vocation," but that if he lived ten 
years, he was determined to do something in new 
fields. His ardent and invincible spirit found the 
way. He threw himself into the cause of the Greeks, 
then struggling against Turkish despotism, and in 
1823 chartered a vessel and sailed from Genoa in 
their aid. He reached Missolonghi, and was made 
commander-in-chief of an expedition against LepantOc 
But the presentiment of his approaching death was 
upon him. On his thirty-sixth birthday, while yet at 
Missolonghi, he composed some verses which seens 
touched with the spirit of prophecy : 

" If thou regret' St thy youth, why Iwe ? 
The land of honorable death 
Is here. . . 

Then look around, and choose thy ground 
And take thy rest " 

Death would not spare him for the soldier's grave 
he coveted. He was stricken with illness before he 
could take the field, and died at Missolonghi, April 
19, 1824. In his delirium he imagined that he was 
leading his Suliotes at Lepanto, and cried oat *' For* 



THE BEGINNING OP MODERN LITERATUKE 365 

ward, forward, follow me ! " At length, as the last 
lethargy settled down upon his untamable and rest- 
less spirit, he said quietly to his attendant, '' Now I 
shall go to sleep." He did not speak again. 

The life and work of Lord Byron were an immense 
force not only in the history of England but through- 
out Europe. His generation hailed him 

. o . Bvron's work 

as the voice of their aspirations and com- 
plaints. He uttered for them, in verse of an indomita- 
ble and masculine vigor, full of a somewhat declam- 
atory but magnificent rhetoric, their iconoclasm, their 
despairs, their unbeliefs ; and he shares in both their 
weakness and their strength. Probably no other Eng- 
lish poet ever won such admiration from contemporary 
Europe ; he gave English literature a larger place on 
the Continent, and in Mazzini's words, "led the genius 
of Britain on a pilgrimage throughout all Europe." * 
But while realizing the importance of Byron in the 
large movement of democracy as a social and political 
force, our primary question is rather as to the per- 
manence and value of his contributions to literature. 
The world has moved rapidly away from tlie 
thoughts and tastes of B3a'on and of his day, but it is 
the distinction of the great poets to express not their 
own time merely, but that which is common to all 
times. Has Byron done this ? Even when judged 
by the most liberal standards, it must be admitted 
that Byron's poetry does not possess in any great 
measure that "great antiseptic" a high excellence of 
style. He is dashing, brilliant, unequal, effective, 
but careless of finish and detail even to an occasional 
* Essay on " Byron and Goethe." 



366 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

slip in grammar. The movement of his verse is nerv* 
ous, strong, and free, but Shelley surpasses him in 
subtle lyrical quality, and in his inspired instinct for 
the aptest word. Yet we forget these shortcomings 
in his immense vitality and ease, and when fairly 
caught in the rapids of his eloquence we are borne 
along by the power of the orator joined to the power 
of the poet. In satire, by The Vision of Judgment 
and Don Juan, he towers above the other moderns 
as the successor of Dryden and of Pope. He has a 
feeling for large results ; his descriptions are bold, 
broad, and telling, and the historic past of Europe 
lives in his swelling lines. He is the poet of the 
mountain-peak, the sea, and the tempest. A con- 
tempt for his fellow-men mingles curiously with his 
love of nature and her solitudes. Unlike Words- 
worth, he does not efface himself in her presence, but 
finds 3, congenial spirit in her moods of fierceness and 
of power. 

For the rest, Byron's life and work are the me- 
morial of his imperious and colossal egotism. His 
demands on life were enormous, his disappointments 
correspondingly severe. Napoleon would have made 
the world minister to his lust of power ; Byron, to 
his lust of pleasure. I myself loould enjoy ^ yet 1 
suffer: this is the sum of his arraignment of life. He 
could create but one type of hero, because he could 
not escape from the tyranny of his own personality. 
His heroes never learn of suffering, they stand soli- 
tary in the midst of the sufferings of a world in the 
insatiate egotism of their own woes, sullen and 
defiant until the last. There is a sublimity in the 



THE BEGINNING OP MODERN LlTEHATURE 367 

inveterate opposition of the individual will to the 
impassive fatality of things ; but in Byron this is 
weakened by the strain of selfishness, and at least a 
suspicion of insincerity. For Byron's romantic 
unhappiness and mad dissipations were more condu- 
cive to popularity than Wordsworth's placid content- 
ment and sobriety. Yet while we may be uncertain 
as to how much of Byron's demonstrative despair was 
" playing to the gallery," his devotion to liberty at 
least was genuine. He could exclaim while others 
doubted : 

" Yet Freedom ! yet, thy banner, torn but flying. 
Streams like a thunderstorm against the wind." * 

His faith in freedom glows in his verse, and lends 
a parting and consecrating radiance to his unhappy 
life. But his conception of freedom is shallow and 
unregulated ; he confuses it with the license to every 
man to do what shall seem good in his own eyes. 
" I have simplified my politics," he writes, " into an 
utter detestation of all existing governments." His 
heroes are, for the most part, desperate men, in 
reckless revolt against the social and moral laws. 
Haughty, unyielding, self -centered, they are rather 
the foes to society than its saviors. Selim, in The 
Bride of Abydos, boasts of his love for freedom ; but 
by freedom he means the unchecked license of the 
buccaneer, free to sail where he will, with a tliousand 
swords ready to destroy at his command. B3n'on is 
without a real social faith ; impatient to pull down, 
he is powerless to lay hold on any rational or helpful 

* 7! this passage, GMlde Harold y canto IV. Stanzas ycvi.- 
xcviii. 



368 INTEODUCTIOX TO ENGLISH LITEEATUJRE 

law of life for himself or for others. He fails to see^ 
with Riiskin, that anarchy is eternally a law of death, 
to realize V/ordsworth's joy in the submission to the 
highest. His Cai7i, in which the deepest and most 
serious side of his nature found expression, is the 
direct antithesis of Wordsworth's Ode to Duty, It 
is the pathos of such a life as that of Byron that it 
brings its own revenges. His mad revolt against 
things as they are becomes^ as he grows older, but 
more furious and bitter, until it reaches its brilliant 
but terrible consummation in Don Juan. 

The want in Byron's poetry lies deeper than any 
mere defect in manner. So far as it fails to present 
any reasonable and well-considered view of life ; so 
far as it fails to be ennobling, helpful, and inspiring, 
just so far does it lack elements which make for 
permanence. For Byron himself, where we cannot 
admire, it is easy to pity and to excuse. Carlyle 
once likened him to a vulture, shrieking because 
carrion enough was not given bim ; he was ratlier a 
cag^ed eagle, who in impotent protest beat out his life 
against the bars. The contest told even on his auda- 
cious energy. Young as he was he could write, 
^^ The dead have had enough of life ; all they want 
is rest, and this they implore." He would have two 
words put over his grave, and no more ; Implora 
pace. The fascination of Byron's personality, the 
sadness of his story, will enshrine tiie memory of the 
man, a stronor and traofic fio-ure ; while bv manv a 
poem, and still more by the superb vitality of many 
a brilliant passage, he has secured a lasting place 
among the poets of his country. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 369 

STUDY LIST 
LOIW BYRON 

Ihe Prisoner of Ghillon; '* There's not a Joy the World Can 
Give;" Childe Harold [Cantos III. and IV.]; selections from 
Byron in Ward's English Poets; "Lines on Completing His 
Thirty-sixth Year; " '* She Walks in Beauty Like the Niglit." 

Biography and Chiticism. A standard edition of Byron 
has recently been edited by E. H. Coleridge and R. E. Prothero. 
Nichol's Byron, English Men of Letters Series; Moore's Life 
of Byron, 2 vols. Swinburne's " Essay on Wordsworth and 
Byron " in his Miscellanies is brilliant and interesting. See 
also Matthew Arnold's Introduction to his * ' Selections from 
Byron " in Essays in Criticism, second series; John Morley, 
** Byron" (in Miscellanies, vol. 1); Macaulay, '* Byron" in 
Essays; Mazzini, Byron and Goethe. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 1792-1822. 

Shelley stands with Byron as a poet of revolt; but 
his devotion to liberty is purer, his love for man 
readier to declare itself in deeds of 
help and sympathy, his whole life en- 
nobled by loftier and more unselfish aims. In Byron 
we may see the masculine element of revolt auda- 
ciously interrogating earth and heaven, deficient in 
reverence and in faith, instant to destroj^; in Shelley 
rather a feminine unworldliness, erring through its 
incapacity to adjust itself to the ways of earth; we 
see in him a theorist and a dreamer, building in the 
air his shimmering palaces of clouds until he '' falls 
upon the thorns of life." Trelawney describes him 
as " blushing like a girl " at their first meeting, and 
speaks of his " flushed, feminine, and artless face."* 

♦Trelawney's Recollections of Last Days of SJielley and 
Byron, p. 36. 



^10 iNTRODtCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUKE 

Strong yet slender in figure, with sensitive, almost 
girlish face, with deep blue poet eyes, and a mass 
of wavy brown hair, early streaked with gray, 
Shelley in our imagination moves among other men 
as one apart. A daring independence of mind dis- 
tinguished him from the first. It was his nature to 
accept nothing on the authority of others, but 
rather to question and prove all things for liimself. 
He dreamed of what the world should be before 
life had taught him what it was, and in the fervor 
of his ideals of truth and righteousness, in his 
''passion for reforming the world,"* — young and 
confident, but too often hasty and mistaken, — he 
'found himself misunderstood and at issue with the 
world. At Eton, where he was sent in 1804, he was 
solitary, shy, eccentric; he did not join in the 
cricket or football, and was commonly spoken of 
by the boys as " Mad Shelley." The petty tyranny 
of the fagging system moved him to protest, and 
he set on foot a conspiracy to suppress it. In his 
school-days, in one of those sudden flashes of 
prophetic insight that sometimes illuminate tlie 
spirit in early youth, his ideal of life came to him 
with strange distinctness. He tells us how he then 
made this resolve, weeping : 

'* I will be wise. 
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
Such power ; for I grow weary to behold 
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize 
Without reproach or check.** 

* Dedication to The Revolt of Islam 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 371 

To a temperament so ardent, lofty, and ill-fitted for 
conformity to the routine thought and usage of 
ordinary men, life was certain to prove but a hard 
matter at best, and Shelley's youth was passed under 
conditions which, for such a nature as his, were 
peculiarly unfortunate. His father. Sir Timothy 
Shelley, a country gentleman in Sussex, was the 
embodiment of commonplace and prejudiced con- 
servatism ; limited and bound by the habits and tra- 
ditions of his class, it was inherently impossible for 
him to understand his son's character or tolerate his 
aims. Shelley's loving and loyal nature made him 
susceptible to influence, but his fiery zeal and inde- 
pendent temper would not brook authority, and any 
attempt to compel him to act against his convictions 
aroused in him the spirit of the martyr. His conflict 
with authority came but too soon. His active mind, 
prone to doubt and to inquire, hurried him into skep- 
ticism, and in 1811 he was expelled from Oxford, 
which he had entered five months before, for a 
pamphlet On the Necessity of Atheism, Shortly 
after quitting Oxford, he married Harriet West- 
brook, a mere schoolgirl, who had excited his pity 
and sympathy, and who was decidedly his inferior in 
social position. Sir Timothy, who had been seriously 
provoked by his incomprehensible son's disgrace at 
Oxford, was naturally incensed anew by this act of 
folly, and the two young creatures — Shelley was but 
nineteen and his girl- wife three years younger — were 
cast adrift. After an interval, a small allowance was 
granted to them by Sir Timothy and Harriet's father, 
»nd they wandered from place to place, Shelley 



372 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

absorbed in his theories, his poetry, and his projects 
for reclaiming the world. Queen Mab, a notable 
though immature production, was the work of this 
time, and was privately printed in 1813. Toward 
the close of the same year Shelley and his wife sepa- 
rated, and after her death in 1816 he married Marj^ 
Godwin, who proved herself more capable than the 
unfortunate Harriet had been, of giving his complex 
and delicately poised nature the sympathy and help 
he longed for. William Godwin, Mary Godwin's 
father, was a theoretical reformer, who preached the 
peaceable abolition, through the pure force of reason, 
of law, government, and religion, and Shelley, who 
had previously felt an enthusiastic admiration for his 
teachings, was now brought into closer relations with 
the advocate of these extravagant doctrines. He 
had thus, on the one hand, broken with authority and 
custom, by his expulsion from Oxford and his breach 
with his father, and on the other he had surrendered 
himself, in his impulsiveness and immaturity, to the 
guidance of a man who expressed the sweeping and 
unscientific notions of social reform then current 
among extremists. Alastor (1816), Shelley's next 
poem, in which he describes the lonely wanderings 
and death of a poet who pursues the unattainable 
and ideal beauty, discloses to us the springs of 
Shelley's own nature. Like Marlowe, Shelley was 
possessed by the " desire for the impossible," and his 
insatiable and buoyant spirit mounts into regions 
where we cannot follow. In the nobility of its verse 
and the beauty of its natural descriptions, Alastor 
shows a great advance in poetic power, ^nd from this 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 373 

time the splendors of Shelley's genius steadily dis- 
close themselves. In his next poem, The Revolt of 
Islam (1818), he poured out those hopes for the regen- 
eration of the world, which are a vital force in his 
life and poetry. Shelley was less blindly destructive^ 
less hopeless than Byron, He saw that the disap- 
pointment which succeeded the failure of the Revolu- 
tion had " unconsciously found relief only in the 
willful exaggeration of its own despair," * and he 
wrote The Revolt of Islam in the belief that man- 
kind were "emerging from their trance."* His 
hero, Laon^ is not a Lara or a Manfred, lost in selfish 
gloom and misanthropy, but a poet-prophet, aspir- 
ing after excellence, who falls a willing martyr to 
his love for men. In contrast to Byron's chaotic 
despondency, the poem strikes anew the note of hope 
and prophecy ; it suggests to us that the interval of 
doubt and depression is passing ; it proclaims a 
social faith. Mankind is to be saved by Love, and 
in the poem " Love is celebrated everywhere as the 
sole law which should govern the moral world." * 
The whole poet- world of Shelley is transfigured and 
glonous in the radiance of this faith. The doctrine 
of Tlie Revolt of Islam was but reiterated in one of 
tlie noblest of his poems, the lyrical drama ©f Pro- 
methens XInhound (1820). There we see Prometheus, 
the type of humanity, or of the human mind, chained 
to the precipice by Jupiter, the personification of that 
despotic authority which clogs man's free develop- 
ment. The hour of liberation is at hand. Asia, the 

* Preface to the Tlxe Revolt of Islam. Tlie passage first 
quoted apparently refers to ByroB. 



374 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

incarnation of that ineffable ideal which Shelley 
sought, the " life of life," and ^' shadow of beauty 
unbeheld," journeys to meet Prometheus. Jupiter 
is overthrown, the rule of despotism broken. Pro- 
metheus unbound is united to Asia, that is, the mind 
of man is wedded to its holiest aspirations^ and the 
world enters upon the reign of universal love, 

** Love from its awful throne of patient power 
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep. 
And narrow verge of crag-like agony springs, 
And folds over the world its healing wings."** 

So in the closing chorus of Hellas (1821), a drama 
inspirsd by the Greek war for independence, the 
poet's vision sees in the coming Golden Age the return 
of '^ Saturn and of Love." 

"Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers. 
But votive tears and symbol flowers/' f 

In spite of his professed opinions, Shelley is in t/iis 
poem one of the most intensely Christian of English 
poets. In Mrs. Shelley's words he had ''an exceeding 
faith in the spirit of Christianity,'' and he went about 
among men the embodiment of love and pity, the 
helper of the helpless and the poor. 

In 1818 Shelley left for the Continent, traveling 
and writing^ amonof the most beautiful scenes. A 
number of poems composed in the year following 
show the deep effect produced upon him by the news 

* F. the speech of Prometheus to Asia, act iii. scene 3, and 
the beautiful lyric •'Life of Life, thy Lips Enkindle," act ii., 
scene 5. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 375 

of the Manchester massacre * and by the thought of 
the oppression and misery at home. Among these are 
The Masque of Anarchy^ in which Murder appears as 
Lord Castlereagh and Fraud as Lord Eldon, with its 
passionate appeal to the people to rise against their 
oppressors; "England in 1819," and "The Song to 
the Men of England." In these poems the demo- 
cratic sympathies of Shelley take a passionate and 
distinctly practical form. The brief space between 
1818 and his untimely death in 1822 is the period of 
Shelley's greatest work. Year by year the fullness of 
his genius was revealing itself. He had learned of life 
and of suffering ; his faith was deepening, his mind 
maturing through experience and incessant study. 
He was becoming a more consummate master of 
his art. That labyrinthine profusion of fancy and 
imagery, which dazzles and confuses us in many of 
his earlier poems by its very splendor and excess, is 
chastened and restrained in his later songs, which 
stand pre-eminent among the most exquisite creations 
of lyric art. But English poetry was to suffer a 
sudden and irreparable loss. In 1822, w^hile sailing 
on the Gulf of Leghorn, Shelley was caught in a 
squall off the Via Reggia and perislied. So swiftly 
and so terribly did that breath of the Eternal, whose 
might he had invoked in song, descend upon him. f 

Criticism can do but little toward helping us to an 
icppreciation of Shelley's character and work. We 
dare not attempt by any cold analysis to reach the 
secrets of a nature so intricately and exquisitely fash* 

* F. p. 296, supra. 

t F. last stanza of Adonais. 



376 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ioned ; to apportion praise and blame, or to recon* 
cile real or apparent contradictions. He was de- 
nounced by his contemporaries for acts and opinions 
which were rightly considered immoral and hurtful 
to the order and happiness of society. No admira- 
tion for Shelley should lead us to think lightly of 
his faults or blind us to their disastrous consequences. 
How far he was morally responsible for erroneous 
principles sincerely held we need not here inquire ; 
what we should realize is that his wrong actions 
were in conformity with what he himself believed to 
be right. To be just to him we must identify our- 
selves, for the time, with his view of life. We must 
realize also the nobility of many of his aims, his 
childlike purity and innocence, which shrank back 
pained and perplexed at the defilements of the 
world. 

Shelley's poetry, like his nature, must be known 
through sympathy rather than through criticism. 
No English poet is more remote from those tangible 
facts of life which daily engross us, none has fewer 
points of contact with the average mental state of 
the average man. Like his Skylark, Shelley mounts 
from the earth as a cloud of fire ; and his song reaches 
us from blue aerial heights. If we have an answer- 
ing touch of his nature, if we have it in us to leave 
the ground, we shall be caught up likewise into those 
luminous and unfathomable spaces where he sings. 
To understand Shelley, Ave must recall those moments 
when some deep feeling has shaken the dominion of 
the ordinary in us, when the familiar has grown 
§tvange to us and the spiritual near, or perhaps wbep 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 377 

a vague desire for a something unguessed has 
possessed us : then, if we imagine those feelings 
intensified a hundredfold, we are within sight of the 
confines of Shelley's world. This, indeed, is more 
particularly applicable to his larger and more diffi- 
cult works, as The Witch of Atlas and Epipsychidion ; 
many of his shorter and more familiar poems are 
free from obscurity, yet full of Shelley's peculiar 
magic. In his purely lyrical faculty, his power to 
sing, Shelley is perhaps without a parallel in English 
poetry. 

STUDY LIST 
PEBCY BTSSHE SHELLEY 

1. Adonais. Given in Hales* Longer English Poems, with 
notes. Cf. note on Lycidas and the elegy in the Milton Study 
List. Cf. also Moschus' Lament for Bion, and Bion's Lament 
for Adonis — the latter translated by Mrs. Browning. Do you 
think Shelley expresses in this poem a belief in personal 
immortality ? If not, what is the teaching of the poem on 
this point. 

2. The Sensitixe Plant ; Alastor, 

3. Shorter Poems. The Skylark, see Keats Study List, 
§2; The Cloud; Ode to the West Wind ; Arethusa ; Lines 
written among the Euganean Hills; Stanzas written in 
Dejection, near Naples; Mont Blanc; Lines icritten in 
the Vale of Chamouni (cf. Coleridge's Mont Blanc); Muta- 
hility, a Lament {v. Wordsworth Study List, on loss of early 
feeling for nature, § 1, c) ; One Word is too often Profaned. 
In studying Shelley as a lyric poet the reader should turn, 
in addition to the above, to the choruses in Prometheus 
Unbound and Hellas. Note particularly the ** Life of Life, thy 
Lips Enkindle " from the former, and the last chorus from the 
Iftljter of these two poepas. 



37b INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

4. Biography and Criticism. Dowden's Life of Shelley, 
3 vols., is the standard work on the subject. Shelley's life has 
been written for the Great Writers Series by William Sharp, 
and for the English Men of Letters Series by J. A. Symonds. 
Essays on the Prometheus Unbound, by Vida D. Scudder, 
Atlantic Monthly for 1892 are interesting and suggestive. 

JOHI^ KEATS. — 1795-1821 
The inclination to associate Keats with Byron ana 
8'ielley, his contemporaries in poetry, is natural, but 

in many ^vays misleading. It is true 
anTshflley^' that the three poets were not far apart 

in age, and tliat none of them lived to 
be old. It is true that each in his own way ex- 
pressed some phase or quality of youth : Byron, its 
nngoverned passions and ill-considered despairs ; 
Shelley, its generous, if visionary, aspirations ; 
Keats, its freshness of unquestioning enjoj^ment, its 
undiille,d and exquisite sensibility to the beauty of 
the things of sense. But the points of difference 
between Keats and the older members of the group 
greatly exceed these more accidental or external 
marks of resemblance. While Shelley's noble tribute 
to Keats' memory and genius in Adonais links the 
two poets together in our thoughts, the personal 
relations between them were extremely slight, and 
m the nature of their genius they were widely differ- 
ent. Byron and Keats were even more widelj^ sepa- 
rated. Byron speaks contemptuously both of Keats 
and of his poetry, while Keats, on his part, shows no 
trace of Byron's influence. In truth Keats was en- 
tirely apart from the democratic and revolutionary 
movement to which Byron and Shelley belonged 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 379 

Those kindred impulses, the pity for human suffer- 
ing and the " passion for reforming the world," which 
had been a growing inspiration and power in Englisli 
poetry from Thomson to Shelley, are absolutely 
alien to the poetry of Keats. His genius draws its 
nourishment from widely different sources, and to 
understand his relation to literary history we must 
approach him as the bringer of a fresh impulse into 
English poetry, tlie force of which is not yet spent. 

Byron and Shelley, the poets of democracy, were 
representatives of the aristocratic class ; Keats was 
the son of the head hostler in a livery 
stable at Moorfields, London. The poet's 
father, Thomas Keats, had married the daughter of 
his employer, and succeeded to the management of 
the business at the Swan and Hoop. There John, 
the eldest child, was born October 31, 1795. As a 
boy he appears to have been at first chiefly remark- 
able for beauty of face, courage, and pugnacity. 
According to the painter Haydon, who knew him 
well in after years, he was, ^' when an infant, a most 
violent and ungovernable child." When about seven 
or eight years old he was sent to a school at Enfield, 
a small town some ten miles north of London. Here 
fighting — according to one of his schoolfellows — 
was " meat and drink to him." He is described as 
violent and generous, as " always in extremes," " in 
passions of tears or outrageous fits of laughter." * 
He was a general favorite, yet he was often morbidly 
miserable and given to groundless suspicions of his 

* This schoolfellow was Edward Holmes, v. Colvin's Keats 
pp. 7. 8. 



380 rNTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

companions. In sucli descriptions we recognize that 
acute sensibility to joy and suffering, that subjec- 
tion to moods and sensations, which characterized 
him in after life, " You tell me never to despair," 
he wrote to Hay don in 1817 ; "I wish it were easy 
for me to observe the saying — truth is, I have a 
horrid morbidity of temperament." * A year later 
he wrote to Bally, '' I carry all matters to an ex- 
treme, so that when I have any little vexation it 
grows in five minutes into a theme for Sophocles." f 
During the earlier part of his school days Keats 
seemed destined for military success rather than for 
distinction as a poet ; but when he was about thir- 
teen the passion for study took possession of him, 
and he read with as much intensity as he had fought. 
He knew no Greek, and in Latin his classical attain- 
ments extended no further than the ^neid, J yet he 
found out a way to Greek mythology through the 
pages of Tooke's Pantheon^ Lempriere's Classical 
Dictionary^ and Spence's Polynietis, Seldom has 
the strength and trustworthiness of that instinct 
which leads genius to select and appropriate the 
material most suited to its development been more 
strikingly illustrated. In this introduction to litera- 
ture Keats had the benefit of the friendsliip of Charles 
Cowden Clarke, the son of the head-master and a 
young man of decided literary tastes. 

During these years at Enfield Keats lost his father 

^Letters, edited by H. B. Forman, p. 17. 
^Ihid., p. 176. 

t C. C. Clarke's chapter on Keats in his Becolleciions of 
Writers. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 381 

and mother, and in 1810, when lie was but fifteen, 
his guardian took liira from school and apprenticed 
him to a Mr. Hammond, a surgeon at Edmonton. 
As this town is but a few miles from Enfield,* 
Keats was able to keep up his intimacy with the 
Clarkes. The influence of Charles Clarke on Keats 
thus continued uninterrupted. The two friends read 
together, and discussed their favorite poets, and 
through Clarke, Keats found a new world of delight 
in the poetry of Spenser. There is a close affinity 
between tlie genius of Spenser and that of Keats, 
and in reading the Faerie Queene the younger poet, 
with his beauty-loving and romantic nature, must 
have felt that he had come into his inheritance. 
Clarke says that he went "ramping" through the 
poem " as a young horse would through a spring 
meadow.'' f It seems to have been this pure enjoy- 
ment of Spenser's poetry that first stirred in Keats 
the desire to write, and, according to good authority, 
his "Imitation of Spenser" was his earliest attempt 
at verse. In another early poem, full of boyish rap- 
tures over chivalry, he does homage to Spenser, and 
calls on his gentle spirit to hover about his steps : 

" Spenser ! thy brows are arched, open, kind 
And come like a clear sunrise to my mind." X 

At eighteen Keats had thus gained access to those 
two enchanted regions — the world of Greek mythol- 
ogy and the world of mediaeval romance — wliich 

* Edmonton lies between London and Enfield, and about 
three or four miles from the latter place, 
f Recollections of Writers : *' John Keats." 
X " Specimen of an iDduction to a Poem." 



382 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITER ATUBE 

were to give their especial coloring to much of his 

greatest work. In consequence of a quarrel with 

Mr. Hammond, Keats did not complete 

Settles m ^^^^ term of his a., prenticeship, but came 
London. , ^ ^ ^\ 

up to London in 1814, and continued his 

study of medicine in the London hospitals. 

He seems to have acquitted himself creditably in his 
professional duties, but the whole force of his nature 
went out more and more toward poetry, which rap- 
idly became his one absorbing passion. Through 
Clarke, who had also settled in London, he read 
Chapman's translation of Homer, and celebrated his 
conquest of this new kingdom for his imagination in 
a sonnet which is one of the first revelations of the 
extent of his poetic power. Soon after 
he met Leigh Hunt, and began a friend- 
ship which was to exercise an important influence on 
his career. Hunt, who was about ten years Keats' 
senior, was an amiable, but somewhat volatile and 
superficial man, with a fine feeling for the beauty of 
a poetic phrase, but no great strength or creative 
power. His poetry, while sometimes pleasing, had 
a tendency to mere prettiness, and was too apt to 
sink into a colloquial familiarity which he mis- 
took for ease, but which was beneath the dignity 
of art. His literary essays were graceful and 
appreciative. Hunt was the head of what was 
derisively called the " Cockney school." He had 
aroused the bitter antagonism of the great Tory 
periodicals, BlacJcwoocVs Magazine and the Quar- 
terly^ by the position he had taken in politics as well 
as in literature, for circumstances had made him 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 383 

a hero of the young Liberals. When Keats came to 

London Hunt was in prison, in consequence of certain 

unflattering comments on the Prince of Wales. 

After softening his captivity by procuring a flowered 

wall-paper and by much reading of Spenser and the 

Italian poets, Hunt became, to Liberals, a martyr to 

liberty, and to Tories an object of attack. He had, 

moreover, aroused the opposition of the Edinburgh 

critics by an attack on the poetry of Wordsworth and 

of Scott. By becoming a poetic disciple of Hunt, 

Keats consequently laid himself open to castigation 

from two of the leading critical periodicals of the day. 

Keats' first volume of poetry, indeed, w^hich appeared 

in 1817, escaped notice. It was a thin volume of 

short poems, full of youthful crudities, and marred 

by a weak eflPusiveness and sentimentality of i^hrase. 

But tlie publication of his long poem of 

Endymion in the year following brouoht ''Endymion" 
^ '^ & ^ and its critics, 

down upon the new adherent of the 

" Cockney school " tlie brutal abuse of the Quarterly 
and Blackwood"^ s^ or, as Landor named it, " Black- 
guard's " Magazine. We know now that the injus- 
tice and cruelty of these attacks were not the cause 
of Keats' early death, tliat Shelley Avas mistaken 
when he called the reviewers murderers, and Byron 
when he said that the poet of Endymion had been 
"snuffed out by an article."* Indeed, after the first 
vjhock, Keats showed a real restraint and manliness. 
"Praise or blame," he declared, "has but a momen- 
tary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the 
abstract makes him a severe critic on his own 
* Bon Juan, canto xi, stanza Ix. 



384 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

works. . . I never was afraid of failure ; for I 
would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."* 
Keats himself spoke of Endymion as a "feverish 
attempt ratlier than a deed accomplished," f and 
while it gives abundant evidence of high poetic 
power, it lacks the sustained excellence and the fine 
restraint which are found in the greatest works. 
Not only was the poem a failure in the eyes of 
hostile critics : Keats had failed to express in it tlie 
real capacity that was in him. He was without 
a profession (for he had abandoned medicine), and 
without adequate means of living. He had his 
genius, and his resolve to be among the great English 
poets after his death. He was twenty-three when 
Endymion was published ; he was not twenty-six 
when he died. Yet in the three years 

Rapid devel- ^^^^ remained for him, darkened toward 

opment. ^ 

the close by mental and physical suffer- 
ings, he won a lasting place among the poets or 
England. It is not the precocity of Keats that sur- 
prises us ; it is the rapidity of his poetic develop- 
ment ; the fact that he passes at one stride from the 
relaxing and mawkisli strain so recurrent in the 
earlier poems, and from the "indistinct profusion," J 
of Endymion^ to such highly-wrought artistic mas- 
terpieces as Hyperion^ The Eve of St. Agnes, and 
the Ode on a Greciaji Urn, It argues well for 
Keats' manliness and for his whole-souled devotion 

* Letters, p. 207, Forman's edition, 
f Preface to Endymion, 

X Shelley's phrase ; v, Forman's edition of Shelley's Prose 
Works, vol. iv. p. 186. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 385 

to liis art, that, in the face of hostile criticism, his 
genius could thus suddenly and triumphantly assert 
itself. At this time (1818) a rival passion began to 
take its place beside his love of poetry. He met 
Miss Fanny Brawne, and his first feelings of mingled 
attraction and disapproval gave way to a violent 
infatuation. It is a feverish and, on Keats' side, 
a pitiable love story, and carries us rapidly to a 
tragic ending. Signs of ill-health had before this 
begun to show themselves, the chances of any imme- 
diate recognition as a poet were most slight, and to 
Keats' excitable and jealous temperament, love meant 
tumult and too often torment. He held to his work, 
but the uncertainties and vexations of his position 
preyed upon him. " I shall be able to do nothing," 
he writes. " I should like to cast the die for love or 
death."* A few months later (February, 1820), 
consumption declared itself, and from the first Keats 
had no hope of his own recovery. In the same year 
he collected and published most of the poems which 
he had written since the appearance of Endymion^ 
and on these poems his fame chiefly rests. In the 
fall of 1820 it became evident that Keats could not 
survive another winter in England, and in September 
he sailed for Naples with his friend Joseph Severn. 
He lingered for a short time in what he called bit- 
terly a "posthumous existence," and died in Rome 
February 23, 1821. His last words were to his 
faithful Severn, " Thank God, it has come." 

The moving principle of Keats' life and poetry is 
the worship of beauty. Somehow there had been 

* Letters, 19th October, 1819, p. 433, Forman's edition. 



§86 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LiTEBATtM 

lodged in this son of a London hostler a seemingly 
miraculous power to know and love beauty and to em- 
body this fine perception of it in a beau- 
poeu^^ tiful form. To him the exercise of this 
power to perceive and to create was the 
supreme, almost the sole, interest. It took the place 
of a religion. The first articles of his creed remain 
for us in two familiar passages; in his conviction that 

'' A thing of beauty is a joy forever," 
and that beauty and truth are one.* We may add to 
these his prose statement that '' with a great poet the 
sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration, 
or rather obliterates all consideration," f and we may 
recall further his significant words to Miss Brawne, 
" Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without 
that I could never have lov'd you"? J The delight 
in beauty in its outward manifestations depends 
partly' on the soul and partly on the senses. Physi- 
cally, Keats was endowed with so fine and pleasure- 
loving an organization that his senses as well as his 
soul were delicately responsive to outward impres- 
sions. This peculiar freshness and openness to im- 
pression lies on the surface of his character ana 
work. '' The glitter of the sea," says Haydon, 
^^ seemed to make his nature tremble,'^'' He luxuriates 
in sensations, he goes into raptures over the taste of 
claret or of fruit. In his work he communicates some- 

*See opening of Endymion and the end of Ode on a 
Grecian Urn. 

t Letter to his brother George, Letters, p. 57, Forraan's 
edition. 

Xlhid.,^^1. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 387 

thing of his keener susceptibility to our duller and 
more phlegmatic senses. That wonder of romance, 
The Eve of St, Agnes, for instance, is 
a poem of sensuous impressions. We «+. "^a^^^?/ 
are made to feel the aching cold, or the 
" poppied warmth of sleep," to hear the resonance of 
the silver trumpets or the pattering of the " flaw- 
blown sleet" ; to see the " carved angels, ever eager- 
eyed," to taste the jellies "soother than the creamy 
curd." It is a poem of contrasts : the radiance of 
light and color, the storm and darkness ; the palsied 
crone and the ancient beadsman, beside the absorbing 
happiness and ecstasy of love and youth. It is this 
same fastidious susceptibility to beauty that declares 
itself in the almost unrivaled verbal felicity of 
Keats' best work. So rich are his best poems in this 
magical quality — as, for instance, his finest odes — that 
we linger over them, held by pure delight in the per- 
fection of the phrase. This full felicity of expression, 
perhaps Keats' greatest distinction as a 
poet, is the quality he seems to have fQj.^^^^ 
admired most in the poetry of others. 
As a boy, he had gone into raptures over the epithet 
"sea-shouldering whales," and in the numerous allu- 
sions to the works of his favorite poets which are 
scattered through his letters, his enthusiasm is always 
for the phrase, never, or rarely, for the idea. He 
wrote to his friend Bailey that he looked " upon 
fine phrases like a lover."* With his openness of 
nature to beautiful impressions and this fastidious 
felicity of phrase, Keats luxuriated in two great 
♦ Letters, p. 364, Forman's editioHo 



388 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

realms of beauty — the wc M of the classic Greek, 
and the world of medii^yal romance. His fellowship 
with the one has given us such poems as Hyperion 

and the Ode on a Grecian Urn ; his fellowchip with 
the other, St, Agnes' Ece and La Belle Denne sans 
Merci. Slielley put his humanitarianism into his 
Prometheus ; under Tennyson's classic poems is the 
undercurrent of modern ideas ; the soul of Coleridge's 
Ancient Mariner is modern within its quaint old 
ballad form. But Keats is remote, not merely from 
his modern surroundings, but from the spirit of his 
time ; in his cLassic poems he is close to Swinburne, 
and in his medievalism he is really the precursor of 
Rossetti and the PreRaphaelites."^ Besides such 
poems as those of which we have spoken, Keats has 
given us in many of his odes and sonnets specimens 
of his personal feelings and mooJs, 

That'Keats was an inspired interpreter of beauty ; 

that he has enriched the literature with poems which, 

though few in number, possess a fascina- 

His place ^-^^^ ^^ ^|^^|^, ^^^,^ these things are bevond 

as a poet. ^ ^ \ . . , 

question. Yet after this is freely recog- 
nized, the place which Keats holds among the great 
poets of England remains still undetermined. Our 
feeling on this matter will depend largely upon 
our ideal of poetry and our convictions as to its 
true aims. If we believe that the highest furiCtion 
of the poet is to give pleasure through the creation 
of a beauty that appeals primarily to the senses, the 
poetry of Keats will come near to realizing our ideal. 
If, on the other hand, we believe that the highest and 
*i\ pp. 459-460. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN lylTERATURE 389 

truest poetry, while possessing this beauty, adds to 

it a beauty more purely spiritual, a teaching and 

uplifting power, and an element of thought, we shall 

find Keats' poetry distinctly insufficient for our 

highest moods. It must be remembered, 

moreover, that the absence of the ethical Histneory 

/ ^ of poetry. 

and spiritual elements in the poetry of 

Keats is not accidental, but is the result of his most 
settled convictions in regard to poetry as an art. He 
was opposed to the idea that the poet should be a 
teaclier, a belief which was the inspiration of Mil- 
ton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning, 
He condemned the philosopliic element in Words- 
worth's poems ; he condemned the love of humanity 
and the desire to serve it in Shelley's. The artist, 
he declared, must have no purpose beyond that of 
the poetic effect. Such a purpose is wrongly thought 
of as the god of the work, "but," he adds, "an 
artist must serve Mammon." * This theory of poetry 
is plainly in keeping with the tastes and character of 
Keats himself. Supreme in one province, he is 
grievously lacking in the highest aspirations, in 
spirituality, and in the ardor for right and truth. 
Apparently devoid of a religious sense, his percep- 
tion of beauty grows less sensitive as beauty becomes 
less physical and more abstract. Back of the work 
of the greatest poets we recognize the tremendous 
force which comes from the whole mind and nature 
of the man. Keats' poetry, beautiful within its 
limits, is circumscribed by the serious limitations of 
Keats himself. In Lamia ^ for instance, whicli has 
* Letter to Shelley, Letters, p. 505, Forman's editioiio 



390 INTRODUCTION TO ENOLISH LITEKATURE 

been pronounced "" one of the most glorious jewels in 
tlie crown of English poetry," * the luxurious emotions 

of the senses, the fascination of the Circe, 
" Lamia." . ^ . . ^ ^ . ^ . 

are idealized and elevated into a super- 
iority to thought and to truth. We are called upon 
to sympathize with Lamia, the serpent-temptress 
transformed into a beautiful woman ; a fair illusion, 
destroyed by the eye of truth. Lamia beseeches her 
lover not to think, knowing that " a moment's thought 
is passion's passing bell." We cannot but recog- 
nize in tliis the spirit of Keats when he wrote, '^ Oli, 
for a life of Sensations, rather than of Thoughts ! "f 
Lamia dies, but Truth, the philosopher who has 
wrought her destruction, ought, says the poet, to 
have his temples bound with ^^speargrass " and the 
^' spiteful thistle." Contrary to his theory, Keats 
has here given us a poem with a teaching; but the 
teaching, while characteristic, is neither elevated nor 
true. It is possible tliat the shortcomings of Keats 
are tiie result of immaturity, and that, had he lived, 
his genius would have declared itself in other ways.J 

*A. C. Swinburne, "Keats," in EncyclopcedAa Britaniiica^ 
ninth edition. 

f Letters, p. 53, Forman's edition. 

t Matthew Arnold contends that, from what we know of 
Keats, it is prohaUe that his genius would have developed in 
'' moral interpretation.'^ He quotes from Keats' letter to show 
that he had a growing desire for study, and gives this as a 
proof of his intellectual possibilities. He omits, however, a 
later passage in which Keats declaa-es that he prefers pleasure 
to study {Letters, p. 432). Probably Keats often expressed a 
passing mood, and too much weight should not be given to 
his often impulsive utterances. 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 391 

What he might have done is matter for conjecture; 
but we know that his later poems are not immature 
but highly finished, and it is clear that his advance 
toward a poetry of moral power and philosophic 
thought Avould only have been gained by a radical 
change in his views of poetry, and by not so much a 
growth as a total making over of the man _ , 
himself. Judging him by what he has poetic 
done, we are constrained, unless we l^^^^^-^io^* 
adopt his views of poetry, to admire with certain 
reservations. His poetry is the song of the Sirens. 
It is weakened by a strain of effeminacy, and its 
atmosphere, often heavy as with sweet and cloying 
odors, is deliciously enervating. We miss in it the 
manly vigor of those mountain heights where, as in 
Wordsworth or Shelley, the air is pure and clear. 
We should lose much were Ave unable to yield our- 
selves to that spell of warm and abundant loveliness 
of which Keats is master, but if we rejoice in the 
life-giving air that blows on the high altitudes of 
poetry, we will not drift into that unthinking or 
wholesale adulation in which lovers of Keats are apt 
to indulge. The motto from his master Spenser 
which Keats prefixed to Endymion is the index to 
the spirit of all his work; it expresses Keats' ideal, 
but we may question whether that ideal is the 
highest : 

* ' What more felicity can fall to creature 
Than to enjoy delight with liberty ? " 



392 INTBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

STUDY LIST 
JOHN KEATS 

1. Romantic and Medieval, {a) The Eve of St. Agnes. 
This is a good example of Keats' mediae valism. The poem is 
given, with admirable notes, in Hales* Longer English Poems. 
Hales refers to Chambers' Book of Days and Ellis 'Brand's 
Popular Antiquities for an account of the popular superstition 
on which the poem is founded. He suggests that some of tne 
incidents of the poem may have been taken from Borneo and 
Juliet, Chaucer's Troilus and Gressida, and the story of the 
elopement of Dorothy Yernon from Haddon Hall. What great 
English poet has influenced Keats in this poem, and in what 
respects? Do you think that stanzas xxx. and xxxi. detract 
from the artistic perfection of the poem as a whole? Con- 
trast Keats' treatment of the Middle Ages in this poem with 
that of Coleridge in The Ancient Mariner and Christabel. 

(b) The Eve of St. Mark. Of. with the foregoing, and see 
Kossetti's life of Keats, p. 184, and Colvin's Keats, p. 162. The 
latter critic alludes to the PreRaphaelite tone of this poem. 

(c) La Belle Dame Sans Merci. F. Colvin's Keats, pp. 
163-164. 

This little poem Mr. Colvin thinks the ** masterpiece (if any 
single masterpiece must be chosen) " of Keats. Apart from 
its beauty, it is important as one of the few romantic poems 
in which Keats deals with the supernatural, an important 
element in compositions of a romantic character. In this 
poem Keats is very close to Rossetti and, to a less degree, 
to Coleridge. One of Rossetti's early pictures is on this sub- 
ject . ( F. , on this point, Theodore Watts' article on * * Rossetti " 
in EncyclopcBdia Britannica, ninth edition.) Of. Rossetti's 
Lilith and Coleridge's Christabel for ''the idea of the evil 
forces of nature assailing man through his sense of beauty." 
Theodore Watts, supra. 

2. Classic Poems, (a) Lamia. This poem substantially 
follows the story of Lycius, and the Lamia as told in Burton's 



THE BEGINNING OF MODERN LITERATURE 393 

Anatomy of Melancholy (part 3, section 2). While Keats 
adheres closely to the main points of Burton's narrative, he 
completely reverses the moral. In Burton the young philos- 
opher, "otherwise staid and discreet,'' is nearly ruined by 
yielding to the spell of beauty. The original idea of the story 
is thus the same as that of many others (Calypso, Circe, the 
Sirens, etc , etc.) ; see supra section 1, c. 

{b) Look up the meaning of a Lamia {Century Dictionary oj 
Names, Anthon's Classical Dictionary, v., also, "Empusa," in 
Smith's Classical Dictionary). Cf. other stories similar to that 
of Lamia, 6. g., Thomas the Bymer, Goethe's Bride of Corinth, 
Duessa, etc. , in the Faerie Queene. What is Keats' attitude 
toward modern science in this poem? Cf Campbell's To the 
Eainhow and the passage in Pleasures of Hope, part 2, begin- 
ning, " Oh ! lives there, Heaven ! beneath thy dread expanse," 
etc. Cf., also, Wordsw^orth's The Poet's Epitaph. Do you 
agree with Swinburne that Lamia is '' one of the finest jewels 
in the crown of English poetry ? " If not, give reasons for your 
view. Cf, Holmes' Elsie Venner and Coleridge's Christahel. 

{c) Ode on a Grecian Urn, Cf with stanza iv., Hawthorne's 
House of the Seven Gables, chap, xi.; Ode to Psyche. 

(d) Hyperion. One of the most successful of Keats' poems 
on a classical subject. Woodhouse, a friend of Keats, writes : 
** The poem, if complete, would have treated of the dethrone- 
ment of Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by Apollo ; 
and, incidentally, of those of Oceanus by ISTeptune, of Saturn 
by Jupiter, etc.; and of the war of the giants for Saturn's re- 
establishment ; with other events of which we have but very 
dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome. 

3. Personal Poems, Odes, Sonnets, etc. (a) Ode to a 
Nightingale. Cf Shelley's Skylark. Which of these two 
poems shows the loftier and more unselfish spirit ? Cf. also 
other poems to the skylark, including those of Wordsworth, 
Hogg, and William Watson. Ode To Autumn, Ode on Melan- 
choly. V. Swinburne's remarks on these odes in article above 
quoted ; Bobin Hood. 

(b) Sonnets. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer; 
Keen Fitful Gusts are Whispering Here and There ; To One iclw 



394 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEKATURE 

has been Long in City Pent ; On the Sea ; On Seeing the Elgin 
Marbles ; Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art— 
(Keats* last sonnet). 

4. Biography and Criticism. The standard edition of 
Keats is that edited by H. Buxton Forman, including both 
poetry and prose, 4 vols., 1883, and, with additions, 1889. 
The Poetical Works of John Keats, with notes, by F. T. Pal- 
grave (Golden Treasury Series) 1884. The Poetical Works 
edited by W. T . Arnold contains preface on the sources of 
Keats' vocabulary and diction. Keats' letters have been re- 
edited by H. B. Forman, and published separately, 1895. 
Colvin's Keats, English Men of Letters Series ; Kossetti's 
Keats, Great Writers Series (contains a bibliography) ; Matthew 
Arnold's essay in Ward's English Poets, ^^o\. iv. (published also 
in Essays in Criticism, Second Series), while admitting Keats' 
deficiencies, assigns him an exalted place. It should be care- 
fully smd ^critically read. Lowell's essay on ''Keats," in 
Among my Books; Swinburne's "Keats," in Encyclopcedia 
Britannica, ninth edition ; " Poetry, Music, and Painting : 
Coleridge and Keats," W. J. Courthope, National Review, 
vol. V. p. 504 ; ** The Centenary of John Keats," The Forum, 
iN'ovember, 1895. For the relation of Keats to the PreRaphae- 
lite movement, ^. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the PreRaphae- 
Ute Movement, by Esther Wood, chap. iii. For bibliography, 
v., also, " Keats," in Stephen's Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy, vol. XXX. 

[Keats' poetry inevitably suggests inquiry into the nature of 
the highest beauty in poetry, the poetic value of the ethical 
and philosophic elements, and the correctness of Keats' 
theories on these points. The student may compare Spenser's 
views in his " Fowre Hymnes," especially the one of the 
series " In Honour of Beautie," and Tennyson's "Palace of 
Art " (for the latter v. pp. 466 and 467, and Tennyson Study 
List, p. 500. %2)post.'\ 



CHAi^TER n 

BEOENT WKITERS.-1830 

The year 1830 may conveniently be regarded as the 
beginning of the latest literary epoch of England. 
Not only did many of the great authors who stand 
as representatives and exponents of the Victorian 
age, begin to write in or about that year, but many 
surrounding conditions in society or in thought 
which liave helped to give form and color to their 
work, then began to impress themselves upon the 
tone of literary production. It is never easy to select, 
out of the complex and multifarious life of a time, 
those particular social conditions or current modes of 
thought which have done most toward giving to the 
literature of the epoch its special note or personality. 
But in dealing with a past epoch at least some of our 
difficulties have been removed by the mere lapse of 
timCc Rightly or wrongly, time has selected for us 
what we must assume to be the leading character- 
istics of the period. The confusion of innumerable 
voices has long ceased, thousands of daily happen- 
ings have passed out of mind, and the meaning and 
due relations of great events have grown more clear. 
Keeping in mind the obstacles to our gaining a just 
and comprehensive idea of that time to which we 
may be said to belong, we must try to understand its 
general meaning and personality, so far as our near 
Hess to it will permit. 

395 



396 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

We can detect three forces at work in the life and 
thought of recent England, which have been potent 
factors in the contemporary literature : 

(1) The advaiice of democracy, 

(2) Tlie general diffusion of knowledge and oj- 
literature, 

(6) The advance of science. 

These are not separate but interdependent forces ; 
each has acted on the others, and their combined 
influence has done much to determine the distin- 
guishing spirit of our epoch and its literature. 

The advance of democracy. By the year 1830 the 
conservative reaction which had followed the meet- 
ing of the Congress of Vienna, had given way before 
a fresh outbreak of the revolutionary spirit. In this 
year the Bourbon king, Charles X., was driven by 
the liberals from the throne of France. The event 
awakened in Germany a responsive agitation, and 
the progress of democracy in Europe, which had but 
suffered a temporary check, was resumed. In Eng- 
land this tendency showed itself in changes so radi- 
cal that they constituted in fact a peaceable and 
legal revolution. The period of prophetic anticipa- 
tion, the period of disappointment and oppression, 
were past, and the nation entered upon an era in 
which the ideas of democracy were to be actually 
put into practice through a series of important 
reforms. 

For centuries the landholdiug class had governed 
the country and monopolized the government offices. 
Many people were also excluded from a share in 
political power by reason of their religious views. 



RECENT WRITERS 397 

By successive acts many of these religious disabil 
ities were removed, dissenters and Roman Catho- 
lics permitted to hold certain town and government 
offices, and by the Emancipation Bill (1829) Roman- 
ists were allowed to sit in Parliament. Still more 
momentous was the overthrow of the political 
supremacy of the landowner. The passage of a 
Reform Bill in 1832 extended the franchise to 
the middle class, which during the industrial and 
commercial growth of the past century had in- 
creased in wealtli and importance ; and by this and 
other changes Parliament became more directly 
representative of the people's will. A second Reform 
Bill in 1867 admitted the working class to a share 
in political power, while a third and still more 
sweeping act in 1884-1885 still farther extended the 
right of suffrage. Within half a century the real 
governing power in England has thus been peaceably 
transferred from an exclusive upper class to the great 
bulk of the nation. William IV. found England 
practically an oligarchy. Under Victoria it has be- 
come an almost unadulterated democracy. The wide- 
spread results of this transference of power are matters 
of history. It has tended to weaken class distinc- 
tions, to better the condition of the working class, and 
to give increased opportunities for popular education. 
It has been clearly related to that great growth of 
the reading public and those wider means for the 
spread of knowledge which are so intimately con- 
nected with the literature of the time. The social 
changes and agitations of which these Reform Bills 
are but a part are certainly one of the greatest 



598 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

features in the history of our time. It has been said 
that " The most impressive thing in Europe to-day 
is the slow and steady advance of the British democ- 
racy."* Thus that wider human sympathy which 
we saw spring up and increase during the eighteenth 
century, uttering itself with gathering power and 
distinctness in a long succession of poets from Thom- 
son to Shelley, has taken in our time an increasingly 
definite and practical form. 

But these reforms have been far from satisfying 
many who long for a yet more ladical change. Tlie 
philanthropic efforts of Robert Owen (1771-1858) in 
behalf of the factory operative and the poor were 
followed toward the middle of the century by the 
Christian socialism of Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) 
and Frederic Denison Maurice (1805-1872), and later 
(in 1860) by the new economic teachings of John 
Ruskin (1819-1900), the importance of whose work 
as a social reformer is but beginning to receive 
due recognition. Labor on its part has banded itself 
too-ether in oro-anizations which have become a dis- 
tinctive feature in our modern society, and on every 
side there are signs of expectancy and social unrest. 
These aspirations and uncertainties have written 
themselves in the pages of the literature. They are 
echoed in our poetry; they have been a great forma- 
tive influence in the novel, the distinctive literary 
form of the day, either directly, from Godwin's Caleb 
WilUa77is (1794) to Besant's All Sorts a?id Condi- 
tions of 3Ien (1882), and Mrs. Ward's Marcdla 
(1894), or in less obvious and more subtle ways. 
^ F. Rae's ContemiJorary Socialism. 



RECENT WRITERS 399 

2. The more general diffusion of hnowledge and 
literature. 

The more general diffusion of education, the pro- 
digious multiplication of cheap books and reading 
matter in every conceivable shape, is closely related 
to the democratic spirit of society and to the advance 
of applied science. Education, like political power, 
is no longer monopolized by an exclusive class ; the 
readers are the people, and reading matter, if not 
literature in the stricter sense, is now produced by 
them and for them. This reading public has been 
widening since the days of Defoe and Addison. 
The early years of the eighteenth century gave birth 
to the periodical essay, and many of the great 
English newspapers — TJie Morning Chronicle^ The 
Times ^ The Morning Post^ The Morning Her aid j 
founded during the last quarter of that century — 
began that wider influence of journalism which is 
one of the features of the present time. The ris- 
ing literary importance of these great journals 
during the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries is illustrated by the fact that Coleridge, 
Lamb, Thomas Campbell, and William Hazlitt, a 
noted English literary critic, were among their con- 
tributors. Newspapers have rapidly multiplied dur- 
ing the present century, and their circulation has 
enormously increased with the removal of the stamp 
and paper duties which were formerly levied upon 
them, and with the improved mechanical means for 
their production.* " A preaching Friar," wrote 

*'*In 1827 there were 308 newspapers published in the 
United Kingdom, of which 55 were in London. In 1887 the 



400 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Thomas Carlyle in 1831, ^^ settles himself in every 
village and builds a pulpit which he calls a news- 
paper ; therefrom he preaches what momentous 
doctrine is in him, and dost thou not listen and be- 
lieve?" Through the pages of his Weekly Register 
(established 1815) it was possible for William Cob= 
bett, the son of a day-laborer in Surrey, to become 
one of the most powerful political writers of his 
time. The opening of the present century saw the 
introduction of another important agency in widen- 
ing the power of literature, in the foundation of the 
great reviews. The Edinburgh JReview^ an organ of 
Whig or Liberal opinions, was started in 1802, nearly 
a century after the foundation of The Taller. This 
provoked the establishment, in 1809, of The London 
Quarterly^ w^hich came forward as an advocate of 
opposite political views. Among the reviews and 
periocjicals that followed were Blackioood's Maga- 
zine in 1817, The 'Westminster Review in 1824, and 
two weekly papers of a high order. The Athenceum 
and The Spectator^ in 1828. These magazines had 
the support of many of the ablest and best known 
writers of the day, and many of them were immensely 
stimulating to the public interest in literature. Even 
the partisanship and ferocity of some of the book- 
reviews were not actually without good result, as 
they tended to promote literary discussion. Thus 
Francis Jeffrey, the first editor of The Edinburgh^ 
pronounced his sentence of condemnation on the 

number of newspapers published in the British Islands is 
given at 2125; 435 of which are published in London." 
V. Ward's Ueign of Vietoria, vol. ii. p. 509, 



iiECENT WRITERS 401 

poetry of Wordsworth ; Coleridge defended his 
friend's poetic principles in his Biographia Lite- 
raria (1817) ; Wordsworth himself stated them in 
prefatory essays to his poems. Hazlitt, Lamb, 
Southey, De Quincey, and Walter Savage Landor 
were writing during these early years of our century 
on books and writers past and present, so that tlie 
time may be thought of as a period of literary 
criticism. 

But literature and knowledge were passing even 
beyond these limits to leaven the poorer and more 
ignorant strata of society. A literature more espe- 
cially devoted to the cause of popular education be- 
came important about the time of the first Reform 
Bill. Men like Charles Knight (1791-1873), the 
brothers William and Robert Chambers, George L. 
Craik, and Samuel Smiles consecrated their lives and 
energies to this work, the importance of whicli it is not 
easy to overestimate. In the year of the passage of 
the Reform Bill (1832) two cheap magazines were 
established. Tlie first of these. The Penny Magazine^ 
was established in London by Charles Knight; the 
second. Chambers^ Edinburgh Journal, was started 
quite independently by tlie Chambers brothers. Both 
of these were enormously popular, the former reach- 
ing a circulation of tAVo hundred thousand copies at 
the end of a year. Besides chea,p and good periodi- 
cal literature, there were penny cyclopedias, cheap 
editions of good authors, and the beginning of those 
means for tlie diffusion of literature and knowledge 
which are now so familiar that we are apt to forget 
their true significance. By the legislative provision 



402 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

for popular education (Foster Education Act, 1870), 
and by private enterprise, Victorian England has 
shown her deep sense of tlie duty and the necessity 
of a general education. Carlyle spoke in the best 
spirit of the time when he declared, "If the whole 
English people, during these ^twenty years of respite,' 
be not educated, . , . a tremendous responsibility 
before God and man will rest somewhere." * 

3. The advance of science. Science, which hag 
attracted to its service a large proportion of the in- 
tellectual force of the time, has conspicuously affected 
the life of modern England in two distinct waySc 
First, by its application to directly practical ends it 
has wrought a revolution in the material condi- 
tions of civilized life. So far as his physical sur- 
roundings are concerned, the civilized man of to-day 
lives in a new earth which science has created 
for him. ,And second, by its researches into the 
history and nature of things, by theories which 
touch upon the problems of man's origin and destiny, 
science has been a disturbing or modifjang element 
in almost all contemporary thought, and in almost 
every department of intellectual activity. In brief, 
it has both transformed life and altered our concep- 
tion of life ; it has done much to change the aspect 
of the world without, and it has penetrated the life 
of the very soul within. 

Many of those important changes in the outward 
conditions of daily life which have followed the prac- 
tical application of science to life, date from about 
that period which we have fixed upon as the begin* 
* Past and Present, bk. iv, oho iii. 



BECENT WRITERS 403 

ning of the present literary era. In 1830 the Liver- 
pool and Manchester Railroad went into operation, 
and six or seven years later a great period of railroad 
construction began. The first electric telegraph in 
England was erected in 1837, the year of Victoria's 
accession, and steam communication with the United 
States was begun in the following year. These new 
means of locomotion and transportation, like tliose 
new means of production which immediately preceded 
them, have helped to create the modern spirit, the 
note of personality which marks the time. The 
facilities for quick and easy intercourse meant the 
further breaking down of old barriers between town 
and country, between section and section ; they meant 
the lessening of provincialism or ignorant prejudice, 
and they meant the opportunity for the transmission 
of newspapers and of news ; so in this, as in many 
other ways, modern science came as an ally of modern 
democracy. On the other hand these changes have 
rudely broken in upon seclusion and contemplation ; 
modern industrialism, with its railroads and factories, 
has made the world uglier ; intenser competition and 
greater chances of money-making have made man 
more selfish and sordidc Wordsworth lived to lament 
the invasion of the peaceful retirement of his be- 
loved Cumberland by the railway and the tourist. 

** The world is too much with us, late and soon," 

at least twice a day it gets itself recorded in print, 
and insists upon thrusting in our faces the catalogue 
of its latest crimes and scandals. It is ^s though we 
lived in the street. 



404 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

'* Jaded with the rush and glare 
Of the interminable hours,'* * 

and were unwilling or unable to take sanctuary in 
the dimness and coolness. All this has tended to 
foster in us that feverish haste and activity, that 
desire for the new thing, however ignorant we may 
be of the old, which seems hardly conducive to the 
creation of enduring masterpieces of literature. 
" Wlierever we are, to go somewhere else ; whatever 
we have, to get something more ; " these, according 
to Raskin's caustic aphorism, are the moving desires 
of the modern world. 

The second effect of the advance of science, its 
modification or disturbance of thought or belief, is 
also to be taken into account in our study of recent 
literature. The year 1830, which witnessed a tri- 
umph of applied science, was also productive in 
purely scientific investigation. Sir Cliarles Ly ell's 
Principles of Geology (1830), expanding men's 
imaginations by its revelation of the vast extent of 
earth's past, was one of the first of those many books 
of science which, during the last half century, have 
combined to modify some of our fundamental ideas 
of life. This book, says Professor Huxley, " consti- 
tuted an epoch in geological science," and also pre- 
pared the world for the doctrine of evolution. This 
last named theory of the beginning and the law of 
life, put forth by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell 
Wallace in 1859, steadily forced upon those who 
accepted it a wholesale readjustment of their ideas 

^ The Buried Life, Arnold. 



BECENT WRITERS 405 

oomparable to that which the discovery of Copernicus 
forced upon our forefathers. It struck at the root 
of men's conceptions of existence ; its influence 
reached far outside the ranks of the specialist, into 
the whole world of thought, moving men to utter 
again the old cry : 

** Ah me, ah me, whence are we or what are we ? 
In what scene the actors or spectators ? " 

With new problems and aspirations, social, scientific 
or religious ; with a world that seems to move with 
an ever-accelerating rush and swiftness ; our literature 
has been heavy-laden with the burden of our serious- 
ness and our complaining. The childlike lightsorae- 
ness of Chaucer's England, the young energy of 
Shakespeare's, the shallow flippancy and finical polish 
of Pope's, all these have passed. In Arnold's magnifi- 
cent and melancholy lines, the England of to-day is 

*' The weary Titan, Tfith deaf 
Ears and labor-dimmed eyes. 

Bearing on shoulders immense 

Atlantean, the load 

Well-nigh not to be borne, 

Of the too vast orb of her fate/** 

This is the England whose voice is heard in our 
Victorian literature. 

The new conditions of life and thought which thus 
took rise in England in about the year 1830, found 
about that time a group of young writers 
capable of interpreting them. Bv that The ^ew era 
year the extraordinary outburst of poetic 
genius which began during the closing years of the 
* '* Heine's Grave." 



406 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

preceding century had spent its force. Words^ 
worth, Coleridge, and Southey still lived, indeed, but 
their work was done ; while the recent and untimely 
deaths of Keats, Shelley, and Byron had made a 
sudden gap in English poetry. Scott was nearing 
the end of his gallant struggle with adversity, hold- 
ing to his work with unflinching tenacity'', but with 
failing body and mind. Into the firmament thus 
strangely left vacant of great lights, there rose a new 
star. It was in 1830 that Alfred Tennyson, the 
representative English poet of our era, definitely 
entered the literary horizon by the publication of his 
Poems^ Chiefly Lyrical. Macaulay and Carlyle, two 
writers who were to occupy a large space in the prose 
of the opening era, had entered literature a few years 
before the advent of Tennyson ; and immediately 
after his coming many of the other great writers of 
the epoch crowd in quick succession. The next 
decade sees the advent of Robert Browning {Pauline^ 
1833) ; Elizabeth Barrett, afterward Mrs. Brown- 
ing {Prometheus Bounds 1833) ; Charles Dickens 
{Sketches hy Box, 1834) ; William Makepeace Thack- 
eray {ITellov^plush Papers^ 1837), and John Ruskin 
[Salsette and Elephanta^ 1839). 

It is not easy to form any general conception of 
the literary period thus begun. The sixty years which 
make up the Victorian era have been years of immense 
literary activity and productiveness ; many, and often 
conflicting, elements have found expression in them, 
and even in this comparatively short space, so rapid 
has been the movement, so fierce and unremitting the 
pressure of the time, that successive phases of thought 



BECENT WRITERS 407 

or style have followed each other with confusing swift- 
ness. The general features of the Victorian litera- 
ture will grow clearer to us through a study of some 
of those authors who represent its diversified activity. 
The practical and prosperous temper of an Eng- 
land that sixty years ago seemed entering upon a 
period of solid comfort and prosperity, 
is reflected in the work of the brilliant T.B.Macau- 
essayist and historian, Thomas Babing- 
ton Macaulay (1800-1859). From his first publica- 
tion, an essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Mevieio^ 
1825, Macaulay 's career was one of unbroken and 
well-deserved success. Few writers have brought to 
their work more enthusiasm for literature, or more 
patient industry ; few have ruled over a wider range 
of reading, or collected a store of information as 
diversified and exact. Macaulay was the born man 
of letters. Before he was eight he was a historian 
and a poet; having compiled a Compendium of Uni- 
versal History, and written a romantic poem, The 
Battle of Cheviot, From the first he was an insati- 
able reader ; from childhood he began laying up in 
his prodigious memory those ever-accumulating 
stores which were to constitute his magnificent 
literary equipment. His nurse said " he talked 
quite like printed books," showing a command of 
language which greatly amused his elders. When 
he was about four, some hot coflPee was spilled on 
him while out visiting with his father. In answer 
to the compassionate inquiries of his hostess he 
replied : ^' Thank you, madam, the agony is abated."* 
* Trevelyan's Macaulay, i. p. 40. 



408 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

As Macaulay grew to manhood his juvenile tastes 
were turned into solid acquirements, and there is 
something substantial and well-rounded in the life 
built on these good foundations. He was successful 
as statesman and as autlior. He was courted and 
admired in the most distinguished circles ; and his 
wide reading, his phenomenal memory, his brilliant 
conversation, sparkling wdth spoils from many lit- 
eratures, helped to make him a social and literary 
leader. He thoroughly enjoyed the world and the 
age in which he found himself; finding it full of sub- 
stantial comforts, and a sensible and rational progress. 
England with her ever-lengthening miles of railroads, 
w^ith the smoke of her thousand factories, with hei 
accumulating gains, delighted him wath her tangible 
and visible successes. But to his shrewd and practi= 
cal intelligence the spiritual hungers and alternations, 
the mysterious raptures and despairs of finer and 
more ethereal natures, must have seemed wholly un- 
intelligible. After reading Wordsworth's Prelude 
he writes in his diary : " There are the old raptures 
about mountains and bataracts ; the old flimsy phi= 
losophy about the effect of scenery on the mind ; 
the old crazy mystical metaphysics ; the endless 
■^vilderness of dull, flat prosaic twaddle ; and here 
and there fine descriptions and energetic declamations 
interspersed." * Macaulay felt, to use his own oft- 
quoted phrase, that " an acre in Middlesex is better 
than a principality in Utopia." The very soul of 
genius looks out at us through Shelley's dreamy and 
delicate features ; we know where his principality 
* Trevelyan's Macaulay , ii. p. 239c 



KECENT WRITERS 409 

lies. Carlyle thought once, as he looked unobserved 
a,t Macaulay's sturdy, blunt features, with their traces 
oi Scottish origin, " Well, anyone can see that you are 
•nn honest, good sort of a fellow, made out of oat- 
-^neal." * In truth Macaulay was as naturally and 
^iiappily in accord with the average sentiment of the 
;ciass of men about him, as Shelley was out of tune 
•-vith it ; and his ability, unlike the mystical power of 
*Shelley, differs from that of the average man less in 
kind than in degree. Not only has such a tempera- 
ment a better chance of happiness than a more ideal 
one ; not only is it better fitted for worldly success ; 
in Macaulay's case it was this very glorified common- 
placeness which qualified him for the great work he 
had to do. Robust, upright, manly, un-ideal, it was 
easy for the growing reading public to understand 
him, and to these popular qualities he added wide 
scholarship and a style of absolute clearness, of cap- 
tivating movement, and unwearied brilliancy. We 
cannot wonder that Macaulay, following close on 
those means for widening the sphere of literature 
already noted, should have become to the growing 
circle of readers the great popular educator of his 
time. His essays, covering a great range of subjects, 
brought history and literature to the people through 
the pages of the magazines. India came home to 
them in his Clive and Hastings ; Italy in his Machia- 
vein ; England in his Chatham/ literature in his 
Milton and his Johnson, The comparative com- 
pactness with which these subjects were handled, 
the impetuous rush and eloquence of the style, tlieir 
* Trevfly^p's Mc^caulay, i. p. 33, 



410 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

picturesqueness, richness, their sparkling antith^^sis, 
took the public by storm. And Macaulay has still 
another qualification as a missionary of learning : he 
was, in Lord Melbourne's neat phrase ^'cock-sure of 
everything." Such confidence hardly indicates power 
of tlie finest order, but none tlie less it is often grate- 
ful to untrained minds, which qualification and reser- 
vation tend to confuse. As an English writer * says, 
in an admirable bit of criticism on this point : " unin- 
structed readers like this assurance, as they like a 
physician who has no doubt upon their case." 

The great work of Macaulaj^'s later years was his 
History of England from the accession of James II, 
On this task he concentrated all the fullness (sf his 
powers : he brought to it a high standard of excel- 
lence, an infinite capacity for taking pains, a mar- 
velous style, and the loving labor of a lifetime. 
More than a century before, Addison had declared 
that through The Spectator he would bring phi'osophy 
out of the closet, and make it dwell in clubs and 
coffeehouses. Macaulay, who is to be associated 
with Addison as accomplishing a similar work on a 
far larger scale, wrote before the publication of his 
History, '' I shall not be satisfied unless I produce 
something which shall for a few days supersede the 
last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." f 
The immense sale of his book, absolutely unpre- 
cedented in a work of this character, is overwhelming 
testimony to Macaulay's position as a popularizer of 
knowledge. " Within a generation of its first appear- 

* Rev. Mark Pattison. 

f Trevelyan's Macaulay, ii. p. B27, 



RECENT WRITERS 411 

ance," writes his biographer, '* upward of one hun- 
dred and forty thousand copies of the History will 
have been printed and sold in the United Kingdom 
alone," while according to Everett no book ever had 
such a sale in the United States, " except the Bible 
and one or two school-books of universal use." * We 
(Should be careful to estimate the importance of 
Macaulay's work at its full value ; we should appre- 
ciate the soundness and manliness of his life and 
character ; we should realize his peculiar significance 
at a time when literature was becoming more dem- 
ocratic. At the same time we should feel that, great 
as his gifts were, they were not of the highest order j 
excellent as his aims were, they were not the loftiest 
nor the most ideal. If we compare the two famous 
essays on Johnson, the one by Macaulay and the 
other by Carlyle, we shall perceive that the first is 
the brilliant, graphic production of a capable and 
liighly trained man of letters ; that the second has 
the penetrative insight, the more exquisite tender- 
ness of the man of genius. 

In passing from Macaulay, the versatile and ac- 
complished man of letters, to Thomas Carlyle (1795- 
1881), the great man whose Titanic 
energy and invigorating power sought n i°^?^ 
an outlet through the making of books, 
we are impressed, at the very outset, with a strong 
sense of dramatic contrast. Study the portraits of 
the two men : Macaulay, as he looks out at us from 
the front of Trevelyan's biography, round-faced, un- 
wrinkled, smooth-shaven, complacent ; Carlyle, with 
f Trevelyan's Macaulay, ii. p. 327. 



412 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

his tumble of hair and shaggy beard, his gaunt face, 
worn and lined with innumerable wrinkles, his sunken 
cheeks and deep-set, wonderful eyes. The face of 
an inspired peasant ; lit up at times, so those who 
knew him tell us, by a strong and passionate vehe- 
mence, expressive of scorn, of humor; expressive, too, 
of that infinite reserve of tenderness that lay in the 
deep places of his strong nature. To this man life 
was terribly and tragically earnest. He battled 
through it, with set teeth and iron purpose, as a 
strong man forces and shoulders his way through 
a tangled jungle. " Woe unto them," he said to his 
friend Sterling, and reiterated in his essay on Scott — 
" woe unto them that are at ease in Zion." He lives 

** As ever in his great Task-master's eye ; " 

he adds to the stern and inflexible conception of duty 
characteristic of his Calvinistic ancestry, that in- 
dwelling sense of God's presence so strong in the 
Hebrew prophet, so rare in our modern Western 
world. To him as to Wordsworth the world is " the 
living garment of God," creation definable in one or 
another language as God's "realized thought." 
Standing thus in the porch of the infinite, he never 
loses that awe and wonder which the most of us 
never feel, or, feeling, so easily put by. A man who 
dwells with " the immensities and the eternities " is 
not likely to adapt himself to the world's ways, or 
agree with the world's judgments ; rather like the 
risen Lazarus in Browning's Epistle of Karshish, he 
brings from other regions a standard which the 
world cannot understand. Hence^ while Macaulay 




THOMAS CARLYLE 



BECIJ^yT WRITERS 413 

was in comfortable accord with an age of material 
progress, teaching, as Emerson said, " that ^ good ' 
means good to eat, good to Avear, material com- 
modity," Carlyle often stood apart in flat antago- 
nism and fiery denunciation. Uncompromising to 
himself, he was habitually uncompromising toward 
others ; crying out to a faithless and blinded genera- 
tion as some stern prophet of the desert. Writing 
in Sartor JResartus of Teufelsdrockh, the imaginary 
philosopher into whose mouth he put his own teach- 
ing, and whose experiences in many instances are but 
reflections of his own, Carlyle says : ''In our wild 
Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts 
and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, 
as it were, unconscious strength, which, except in the 
higher walks of Literature, must be rare." * This 
may stand, with certain reservations, as a picture of 
Carlyle himself ; in its spirit and broad outlines 
essentially true. 

Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, a little 
fillage in Dumfriesshire, December 4, 1795. Froude 
describes the place as '' a small market town consist- 
ing of a single street, down the side of which, at that 
time, ran an open brook. The aspect, like that of 
most Scotch towns, is cold, but clean and orderly, 
with an air of thrifty comfort." f About sixty miles 
to the northwest of Ecclefechan lay the district 
which had brought forth Burns, that other great 
Scotch peasant, of whose life Carlyle was to be the 
truest interpreter. Some thirty miles to the souths 

* Sartor Resartus, bk. i. eh. iv. 

♦ Froude's Carlyle, i. p. 3. 



414 INTKOBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

at the edge of the Cumberland Hills, was the birth* 
place of Wordsworth. Carlyle's father, James Car- 
lyle, was a thrifty, hard-working stone-mason ; a 
sterling, unapproachable, reticent man, with strong 
religious convictions, and a faculty of concise and 
vigorous speech. He possessed " Humor of a most 
grim, Scandinavian type," a quality which notably 
characterized his son. James Carlyle was one of five 
brothers, graphically described by an apprentice to 
one of them as "a curious sample of folks, pithy, 
bitter-speakin' bodies, an' awfu' fichters." Accord- 
ing to Carlyle himself, they were remarkable for 
"^ their brotherly affection and coherence ; for their 
hard sayings and hard strikings." When such a 
granite stock produces a genius — a man that can 
speak for it — we may look for originality, a strong 
accent, an iron grip, and a stroke like that from 
a sledge-hammer. There is little in the outward 
events of Carlyle's life that need detain us. In his 
childish years he led ^' not a joyful life," he tells us, 
" but a safe and quiet one." His home was the pru- 
dent, God-fearing household of the Scotch peasant ; 
all the surroundings wholesome, perhaps, but some- 
what rigid and repressing. " An inflexible element 
of authority," Carlyle writes, '^surrounded us all." 
He ran barefoot with his brothers and sisters, all 
younger than himself, in the street of Ecclefechan ; 
he was sent to the village school, and afterward to 
the grammar school at Annan, a town on the Solway 
Firth, some eight miles from home. His parents 
were proud of the ability he showed, and were 
anxious to fit him for the ministry of the Kirk, 



RECENT WRITERS 415 

naturally tlie highest ambition of such a household ; 
so at fourteen he entered the University of Edin- 
burgh, having walked the eighty miles that Iny 
between Ecclefechan and the capital. He succeeded 
in obtaining a place as teacher of mathematics in the 
Annan Academy, and left the university in 1814, 
before taking his degree, to enter on his duties. In 
1816 he gave up his post to become master of a 
school in Kirkcaldy. But the drudgery of teaching 
became intolerable, and a change in his religious 
views had forced him to abandon the idea of enter- 
ing the ministry. In 1818 he took his little savings 
and settled in Edinburgh, where he began the study 
of the law. But he had not yet found his work. 
Law lectures proved indescribably dull to him, 
"seeming to point toward nothing but money as 
wages for all that bog-post of disgust." 

Already dyspepsia, his lifelong tormentor, had 
fastened upon him. He knew that he was " the 
miserable owner of a diabolical arrangement called 
a stomach," a bitter knowledge that never left him. 
These years of uncertain prospects and physical suf- 
fering were also a critical time of doubt, despair, and 
fierce spiritual conflict. He has told us in Sartor 
Mesartus the story of this period of '^ mad fermenta- 
tion," with its doubts of God, of the obligations of 
duty, of the reality of virtue. How he stood in 
those daj^s of trial, "shouting question after question 
into the Sibyl cave and receiving for answer an 
echo"; how he called out for truth, though the 
heavens should crush him for following her ; how he 
reached at length the appointed hour of deliverance 



416 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

when, in a mysterious flash of conversion, he came 
forth free, independent, defiant. We must study 
this crisis of the spirit in the words of Carlyle him- 
self, remembering the intensity of his nature, his 
passion for probing things to the center, his sincerity, 
his capacity for faith. 

Meanwhile Carlyle's aspirations had turned toward 
literature, and he had contributed a number of arti- 
cles to the Edinburgh Encydopoedia, He also began 
to learn German, a study destined to powerfully 
affect his life and work. His German studies 
brought him into contact with a literature which 
seemed to reveal to him " a new heavens and a 
new earth." He became an enthusiastic student of 
Richter. His works give evidence of his absorption 
of the ideal philosophy of Fichte, and above all he 
came under the spell of Goethe. These studies did 
more than color Carlyle's thought and help to pro- 
duce the peculiar mannerism and eccentricity of 
his style. There was at that time a furor for German 
literature, and the literary results of Carljde's studies 
thus fortunately happened to fall in with the popular 
demand. Thus in 1822 he contributed an article on 
Faust to the N'ew Edinburgh Revieio; his transla- 
tion of Goethe's Wilhehn Meister appeared in 1824 ; 
his Life of Sohiller^ which had previously come out 
in the London Magazine^ was published in book 
form in 1825 ; and his Specimens of German Bo- 
mance in 1827. The year before the publication of 
the book last named he married Miss Jane Welsh, the 
daughter of a provincial surgeon of good family and 
of considerable local reputation On her father's 



RECENT WRITEK8 417 

death Miss Welsh had inherited a small farm at 
Craigenputtock, in Dumfriesshire, and there Carlyle 
and his wife settled in 1828. The little farmhouse 
was set solitary in tlie midst of a somewhat dreary 
tract of moorland, and here, shut out from the world, 
Carlyle threw himself at work with characteristic 
intensity. He had left behind him the time of hack- 
work and translations, and was reaching out toward 
something that should more truly represent him. He 
wrote a number of essays for the Edinburgh^ among 
them his unapproachable study of Burns ; and there 
he composed Sartor Hesartus, This extraordinary 
book contains the germ of Carlyle's philosophy. 
His grievous uncertainties and hesitations were over. 
Much had been lived tlirough to make this book, 
and into it Carlyle poured what he had gained, in 
good measure and running over. Carlyle's person- 
ality is alw^aj^s present in his writings, but never 
more strongly than here. Midway in this mortal life 
he delivered to us the deepest things that life and 
suffering had taught him, the essence of his message. 
In Sartor Hesartus, with its indescribable com- 
pound of grim humor, abruptness, tenderness, gro- 
tesqueness, broken by overpowering torrents of 
eloquence, Carl^^le reveals himself. It was his 
master passion to get at the heart of any object 
of thought, to tear away all the external and out- 
ward aspects through which any fact may reveal 
itself to us, and, discarding everj^tliing superfluous 
and accidental, lay bare its underlying meaning. In 
his studies of men he does not rest at the outward 
events of their lives ; he would lay hold of their very 



418 INTKODUCTIOISI TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

souls, and it is this which gives to his judgment such 
an extraordinary truth and value. In the same way 
he sees that in every case there is the outward form 
in which a fact becomes apparent to us, its body ; 
and there is its soul, its inner meaning and reality. 
" It is the duty of every hero," he declares in a later 
book, "to bring men back to this reality," to force 
them to penetrate beneath the surface, to teach them 
"to stand upon things and not upon the shows of 
things." Sartor Besartus, or the tailor re-tailored, is 
the philosophy of clothes, that is, the vesture or sym- 
bols of things ; it aims to point us to the reality that 
underlies these outward forms or clothes^ in which 
the underlying fact reveals itself. "Symbols are 
properly clothes — all forms whereby spirit manifests 
itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagina- 
tion, are clothes; man's body is but his ^earthly 
vesture' ; the universe itself, with its manifold pro- 
duction and reproduction, is but the living garment 
of God." Through all the book spirit is recog- 
nized as the true and enduring reality. With Car- 
lyle it is the things which are unseen that are eternal, 
and in this he stood in absolute opposition to the 
material and scientific element in his time. Human 
history itself is but the clothing of ideas in acts, and 
the great man, or hero, is but the highest human 
revelation of the will and spirit of God. 

In 1833 Sartor Hesartus began to appear in 
Fraser^s Magazine, finding but few readers among 
a bewildered or indifferent public. In the year fol- 
lowing, Carlyle took a decisive step in leaving 
Craigenputtock and settling in London. There he 



RECENT WRITERS 419 

lived, during the forty-seven years that remained to 
him, in a house in Chelsea, which became the resort 
of many distinguislied men, and was thought of by 
many, says Professor Masson,^' as the home of the real 
king of British letters." Up to this time Carlyle's 
life had been a stubborn fight with poverty. He had 
won recognition from the discriminating few ; but he 
would write in his own way and in no other, and as 
yet" he had gained nothing like a popular recognition. 
In a few years this was entirely changed. His 
popularity was begun by the appearance of his 
French Revolution^ in 1837. About the same time 
he gave the first of several courses of lectures, which 
made his strange, rugged figure and impassioned 
earnestness familiar to London audiences. He 
"toiled terribly," bringing forth his great works 
with indescribable stress and effort. In 1866, shortly 
after he had fought his way through a mighty task — 
his Life of Frederick the Great — he was made Lord 
Rector of the University of Edinburgh, a post of 
great honor. At last his own country had honored 
her prophet, but the triumph was shattered by the 
sudden death of Mrs. Carlyle, "for forty years the 
true and loving helpmate of her husband." Fifteen 
years longer Carlyle himself lingered on ; wandering 
about the Chelsea Embankment or Battersea Park, 
living over in an old man's dreams that past which he 
recorded in his Reminiscences, Strength had alto- 
gether left him, and life was a weariness. He died, 
February 4, 1881, and was buried, according to his 
wish, beside his family in the little churchyard at 
Ecclefechan. 



420 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

With all deductions, Carlyle remains one of the 
most influential and considerable figures in the 
literature of our century. He stands in 
wTrk ^^ ^^^ midst of its noise of traffic, its haste 
to get rich, the prophet of the spiritual 
and the unseen. Wordsworth had protested against 
that custom, that daily pressure of the trivial, which 
deadens the higher side of our nature, and " lies 
upon us like a weight.'' Carlyle helped men to rid 
themselves of the burden of the petty and conven- 
tional, which was stunting the growth of their souls. 
He would have them do this, not by seeking refuge 
from the world of every day in some region of 
€loudy romance, but by realizing that, looked at 
rightly, this world of every day is essentially divine 
and miraculous. " Is not nature," he asks, " as 
eternal and immense in Annandale as she is at 
Chamauni ? The chambers of the east are opened in 
every land, and the sun comes forth to sow the earth 
with orient pearl. I^iglit, the ancient mother, fol- 
lows him with her diadem of stars : and Arcturus and 
Orion call one into the infinitudes of space as they 
called the Druid priest or the sheplierd of Chaldea." * 

And great as is this miracle called nature, still 
greater is the wonder of that miracle called man. 
As Carlyle was opposed to modern science in his 
conception of the physical world, seeing in it a living 
divine revelation, and not a dead "world machine," 
he likewise became more and more at odds with that 
view of society which would regard it rather as a 

*Froude's Life, 1. 244. Cf. passage ou Miracles in JSeroe$ 
and llerQ Worship, lect. ii. 



RECENT WRITERS 421 

mechanism than as a living thing. He distrusted the 
democratic theories and reforms which marked his 
time. He sneered at the cry for " ballot boxes and 
electoral suffrages " ; * believing that the saving of 
the world must come not through majorities, which 
were ignorant or confused ; not through institutions, 
which were likely to become mere hollow, ineffectual 
contrivances, but through the personal element, the 
hero or great man, who had been, and must continue 
to be, the largest factor in history. With Carlyle 
there is no patent political receipt for progress. He 
has no patience with that idea of history which regards 
human society as an organism developed according to 
fixed laws, an idea w^hich reflects the scientific temper 
of our time. To him the history of the world is at 
bottom the histor}^ of the great men who have worked 
here. This intense individualism, as opposed to 
merel}^ governmental authority, may seem to suggest 
Byron and Shelley, but one must remember that with 
Carlyle the few are to command, the many to obey. 

Without attempting to codify Carlyle's work into 
any set system, it is safe to say that a great propor- 
tion of it is closely related to this central theory 
of history. In the Heroes and Hero Worship (1841) 
the importance of the great man in history is enforced 
by a study of a series of heroes, representative of the 
different forms in which the hero has appeared. It 
aims to show that in all these cases the essential 
heroic qualities — earnestness, sincerity — have been 
the same. So the lives of Frederick the Great and 
of Cromicell are but more exhaustiva gtudieg of th© 
* fferoes and Hero Worship, lect. iv. 



422 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

great man as a historic factor. Carlyle's heroes were 
commonly taken from the strong men who had the 
power to compel the world to do their will. But we 
must not fall into the error of regarding him as a 
mere believer in brute strength. Right and might 
he believed were in the long run synonymous, not 
because might made right, but because in the large 
movement of history the strongest were ultimately 
the wisest, the most righteous. This tliought of the 
ultimate triumph of right over wrong, and of strength 
over weakness, is the text of his French Revolution. 
The world is true and not a lie, and a sham govern- 
ment, grown too decrepit to govern, like that in 
eighteenth century France, is a lie and cannot stand. 
Had the revolution failed to take place, Carlyle tells 
us, he would have despaired of the world. As it was 
it demonstrated that though the mills of the gods 
grind sjowly, injustice, misgovernment, and the 
scepter of the strong in the hand of weakness, work 
at last the inevitable retribution. ^^ Yerily there is a 
reward for the righteous, doubtless there is a God 
that judgeth the earth." 

We may differ in our estimate of the truth or 

value of Carlyle's doctrines ; we may be convinced that 

hero worship is a vain dream, as a prac- 

t 1 tical form of government in our modern 

society ; but this need not at all inter- 
fere with our admiration for his books, as master- 
pieces of literarj^ art. Carlyle's style is without 
parallel in the entire range of English prose. Often 
turgid and exclamatory, its lack of simplicity and 
restraint is relieved by a grim play of humor, or for- 



RECENT WRITERS 423 

gotten in the momentum of its terrific earnestness. 
Under all mannerisms we know that a strong man is 
speaking to us out of the depths of his soul, as one man 
seldom dares to speak to another in this solitary and 
conventional world. Its power is very different from 
that of mere literary dexterity. "I feel a fierce glare 
of insight in me into many things," Carlyle wrote in 
his Diary, " I have no sleight of hand^ a raw, untrained 
savage, for every civilized man has that sleight."* 
His French Revolution having at length '' got itself 
done" after incredible effort, Carlyle seems to fairly 
hurl it in the face of the public, which as yet would 
not know him. " You have not had for a hundred 
years," he thunders, "any book that comes more 
direct and flaminof from the heart of a living: man. 
Do with it what you like, you " f 

This determination to speak what was in him to 
say, in his own fashion and without regard to any 
literary precedent, is another of the many traits 
which Carlyle and Wordsworth have in common. 
Both belong: in this to that revolt ao^ainst the formal- 
ism of the Augustan Age, and to both *' convention- 
ality was the deadly sin." 

To the force of earnestness and unconventionality, 
Carlyle added a phenomenal descriptive power. He 
had the poet's instinct for the picturesque and 
dramatic ; by the intense concentration of his imagina- 
tive insight the past is alive not only for him but for 
us also ; he both sees and makes us see. In his 
French Revolution^ the "prose epic " of our century, 
the most dramatic episode in modern history has 

* Froiulc's Carlyle, iii p. 47, f Froude's Carlyle 



424 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

received its greatest interpretation in literature. 
The descriptions of the death of Louis XV., of the 
destruction of the Bastile, the twilight silence of a 
pastoral idyl after its noise and fury, of the flight and 
capture of the king — to find anything comparable to 
these and countless others like these, we must turn 
to the pages of our greatest poets. Or again, what 
can we find to set beside those pages in which the 
meaning and wonder of a great city are flashed on us, 
as though we had been suddenly caught up into the 
air and made to look down upon it with the compre^ 
hensive and penetrative gaze of a god."^ Carlyle, too, 
is one of the greatest of word portrait-painters. 
Read liis description of the face of Dante, with its 
" deathless sorrow and pain"; of Rousseau's, with his 
"narrow contracted intensity, bony brows, deep, 
straight-set eyes." Read, too, those unsparing charac- 
terizations of his contemporaries ; they may be unfair, 
unjust, untrue, but what an instinctive and lavish 
power of characterization they exhibit. Often care- 
lessly uttered, and soon forgotten, every word goes 
home to its mark wdth the merciless power and pre- 
cision of a well-directed javelin. 

And finally, Carlyle's style reflects his own humor 
and large-hearted tenderness ; the pathetic gentleness 
of a strong, stern man who has suffered. It were 
better if we dwelt less on Carlj'le's grumblings and 
dyspepsia, his irritability, his half -humorous vitupera- 
tions, and thought more of his unobtrusive acts of 
kindness and of the compassion that was in him. 
Surely it is no common pity that goes out to us in 
* See Sartor Resartus, bk. i. ch. iii^ 



RECENT WRITERS 425 

such a passage as this : "Poor wandering, wayward 
raan ! Art thou not tried and beaten with stripes, 
even as I am ? Even whether thou bear the Royal 
mantle or the Beggar's gaberdine, art thou not so 
weary, so heavy laden : and tliy bed of Rest is but a 
grave. Oh, my Brother, my Brother ! why cannot I 
shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears 
from thy eyes ! " * 

Carlyle has helped his time not so much by the 
promulgation of any definite system of philosophy, 
for in his teachings he is often open to the charge of 
inconsistenc}^ and exaggeration, but by the fresh in- 
spiration he has brought to its higher life. He is a 
great writer, but above all he has been a spiritual 
force, quickening and invigorating the moral and re- 
ligious life. His work is to be associated in this with 
that of JolmRuskin (1819-1900), another 
great exponent of the highest ideas of 
our century. In Ruskin, much that is best in con- 
temporary life, thought, and art has been combined 
and stamped with the seal of his own aggressive and 
dogmatic personality. On the right hand or on the 
left, he touches or supplements one or another of our 
great modern guides, rising at the same time distinct 
from them all in his own work and character. Like 
Keats he is exquisitely responsive to beauty, and has 
come as her priest and her revealer. In all his work 
as art critic, in his lifelong efforts to coax or scourge 
an obdurate British public to a more general and 
genuine love of beautiful things, he touches at one 
point the aesthetic element of the age. Like Words* 
^■Sartar Resartus, bk. ii. cb. ix. 



426 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

worth, he is the lover and interpreter of Nature, 
doing for her in his prose a work similar to that 
which Wordsworth and the other great nature-poets 
performed in verse. And like Carlyle, Ruskin is a 
preacher and prophet to his generation ; not rapt, like 
Keats, in aesthetic delights ; not wholly withdrawn, 
as Wordsworth, into the contemplation of nature, he 
throws himself into the noisy strifes and dissensions 
of his time, coming among the crowds of the market 
place to warn, to rebuke, and so far as he can, to 
help and to restrain. 

Nothing but a loving study of Ruskin's work can 
give us any conception of the wonder and loveliness 
of his prose-poetry of nature. Here the exquisite 
sensibility of the landscape painter to color and form 
is joined to the poet's gift of language, his guiding 
instinct in the choice of words ; here, too, something 
of the scientist's spirit toward the world of matter 
is transfused and uplifted by the spiritual apprehen- 
sion of the mystic. Ruskin's sense of color is as 
glorious as Shelley's, his word-pictures often as lumi- 
nous and as ethereal ; indeed, so phenomenal is his 
descriptive powder that he may be thought of as hav- 
ing created a new order of prose. Take, for instance, 
his description of the Rhone, and notice how alive it 
is with Ruskin's joy in color and power ; how the 
wonderful adjectives reveal his delight in the mighty 
river's crystalline purity and force. '' For all other 
rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a 
vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the 
Rhone flows like one lambent jewel ; its surface is 
nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent 



RECENT WRITERS 427 

rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, 
and radiant to the depth. Fifteen feet thick, of not 
flowing but flying water ; not water, neitlier — melted 
glacier, rather, one should call it ; the force of the ice 
is with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, the glad- 
ness of the sky, and the continuance of time." After 
a few sentences we come upon this bit of pure 
poetry : " There were pieces of wave that danced all 
day as if Perdita were looking on to learn ; there 
were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped 
like chamois; there were pools that shook the sun- 
shine all through them, and Avere rippled in layers 
of overlaid ripples, like crystal sand." * Ruskin's 
descriptions of nature affect us not merely because of 
their magical richness and flow of style ; not because 
he piles up in them a shining structure of light and 
color, but because to him, as to AYordsworth and Car- 
lyle, the shows of earth and sky are far more than an 
empty pageant ; because he, too, " sees into the life 
of things," f and reveals it to us. " External nature," 
he declares, "has a body and soul like a man ; but 
her soul is the Deity." J And this doctrine that we 
are to regard Nature as the bodily or visible revela- 
tion of God, is not with Ruskin a mere philosophic 
theory ; it is remarkable for its vitality and definite- 
ness, it is intimately connected with his principles of 
aesthetics, and makes beauty illustrative of the nature 
of God. He believes we are so made that, when we 
are in a cultivated and healthy state of mind, we 

* PrcBterita, vol. i. ch. v. 

f Wordsworth, " Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey." 

X Modei^ Painters. 



428 INTKOBUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBlii 

must delight in beauty and be thankful. The appre- 
hension of true beauty is therefore a test of our near- 
ness to Him whom it expresses and reveals ; and 
taste, the faculty by which this beauty is discerned 
and enjoyed, is, in its highest form, a moral or ethical 
quality. ^' The sensation of beauty is not sensual on 
the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but is 
dependent on a pure, right, and open state of the 
heart, both for its truth and its intensity." Hence, 
in those attributes or qualities which enter into the 
beauty of Nature, Ruskin sees the types or symbols 
of " God's nature or of God's laws "; in the infinity 
of Nature, Divine incomprehensibility; in her unity, 
Divine comprehensiveness; in her repose. Divine 
permanence ; in her symmetry. Divine justice ; in her 
purit}^. Divine energy ; " in her moderation, the type 
of government by law." * With these ideas of Nature 
and Beauty, Ruskin's principles of art are naturally 
connected. Just as the perception of Beauty is a 
moral attribute, so the interpretation of Beauty, 
which is the work of the artist, is likewise moral, the 
act of a pure soul. Perhaps Ruskin gives the clearest 
and briefest statement of this, his fundamental art 
principle, which has exposed him to endless ridicule 
and misunderstanding, in a paragraph in The Queen 
of the Air ; " Of course art-gift and amiability of 
disposition are two different thingSj for a good man 
is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for color 
necessarily imply an honest mind. But great art 
implies the union of both powers i it is the expres- 
sion, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not 
* Modern Painters, vol. ii. pp, 263-319, 



REClJNT WRITERS 42§ 

there, we can have no art at all ; and if the soul — 
and a right soul, too — is not there, the art is bad, 
however dexterous." * On this principle of the foun- 
dation of great art in morality, all Ru skin's work as 
an art critic is built. He tells us, for example, that 
in all his work as a critic of architecture his aim has 
been, " to show that good architecture is essentially 
religious — the production of a faithful and virtuous, 
not of an infidel and corrupted people." f These 
ideas of Ruskin must be firmly grasped, because they 
are the keynote, not only to his work, but to his life 
also, making his whole career consistent and intelligi- 
ble. He is first of all a great moral, or rather a great 
Christian, teacher. English -born, he really belongs 
by descent to the land of Knox and Carlyle, and 
religious earnestness, the passion to convert, to dog- 
matize, and to reform, goes even deeper w^ith him 
than his love of beauty. Like Carlyle he was brought 
up on the study of the Bible, reading it and commit- 
ting long passages in it to memory in daily Bible les- 
sons at his mother's knee. While Keats was first 
of all the dreamy worshiper of absolute beauty, Rus- 
kin has been first of all the impulsive and passionate 
defender of convictions, the proselytizer and the 
knight-errant of unpopular truths. Shortly after his 
graduation from Oxford, he enters the lists in his 
Modern Painters (1st vol., 1843) as the champion of 
Turner, whose merit as one of the greatest landscape 

* Queen of the Air, § 106 ; cf. Sesame and Lilies, Of Kingti 
Treasuries, The Mystery of Life, and its Arts, §§ 105-106; t 
^Iso, contra, Symonds' Benaissance in Italv. 

t Crown of Wild Olive, Traffic. 



430 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

painters of all time had then received but scanty 
recognition. This work, altlioiigh the outcome of a 
desire to vindicate tlie genius of Turner, and the cor- 
rectness of his principles of painting, far outgrew 
the limits of its original design, and became, as it 
progressed, a setting-forth in prose of unexampled 
splendor and purity of Ruskin's theory of art. He 
contends for faithfulness to the object portrayed ; 
he would have the painter go himself to Nature, 
"rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning 
nothing.^' This last saying is worthy of our especial 
regard, because it shows us that Ruskin's teaching is 
in this but the carrying the hatred of shams, that 
love of truth and sincerity which Wordsworth and 
Carl vie exemplify, into the sphere of art. Ruskin's 
advice may be set side by side with Wordsworth's 
trust that he has avoided false descriptions in his 
poems,' because he has "at all times endeavored to 
look steadily at the subject." To "look steadily at 
the subject " — this chance phrase of Wordsworth's 
defines for as tlie nature of that change which had 
entered into the art, the poetry, the political thought, 
the life of the English world. 

For about twenty years from the publication of 
the first volume of Modern Painters^ Ruskin gave 
his chief energies to the study and criticism of art. 
The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The St07ies of 
Ve7iice, besides the concluding volumes of the Modern 
Painters, are among the works of this time. Since 
then, that is, from about the time of the conclusion 
of Modern Painters in 1860, while Ruskin's deepest 
interests and purposes have remained unchanged, his 



RECENT WRITERS 43 1 

best effort has been given to ethics and social reform. 
In his loving study of nature and art and beauty, the 
cry of his century would not let him rest ; the 
thought of the sordid ugliness of the world about 
him, of the sufferings, the problems of humanity, 
beset him, and he would not put them by. ^'I am 
tormented," he wrote, '^ between the longing for 
rest and lovely life, and the sense of the terrific call of 
human crime for resistance and of human misery for 
help." To respond to this call meant, in Raskin's 
case, to leave a chosen and successful sphere of work, 
and enter on another bristling with difficulties. It 
meant the flinging down the gauntlet to his genera- 
tion, the fierce and single-handed onslaught on its 
deep-seated evils, its cherished prejudices, the very 
law by w^hich it lived. Yet the call of human misery 
was answered, and whatever may be thought of the 
wisdom or practical value of Ruskin's economic doc- 
trines, we cannot but feel a glow of honest admira- 
tion, such as we ieel on hearing of any heroic deed, 
on seeing his ardor, his audacity, his purity of pur- 
pose, realizing as we must the greatness of his foe. 
Great as this break in Ruskin's life seems, from art 
to social science, in reality the work of his second 
period is the consistent and logical consequence of 
his first. For twenty years he had labored for the 
cause of pure art, and the conviction had but grown 
stronger in him that pure art was the outcome of 
a just, pure, and believing community. He believed 
that it was idle to preach the love of art and of 
beauty to a nation whose standards of living he con- 
sidered vulgar and dishonest, whose real worship 



432 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was the worship of wealth and worldly success, or, as 
in his own personification, the " Britannia of the Mar- 
ket," the " Goddess of getting on." To promote the 
cause of art, it became necessary to secure by the puri- 
fication of the entire social system, by the establish- 
ment of nobler and truer ideals of living, that moral 
soundness out of which pure art is produced. Ruskin 
was thus brought by a different route to face those 
same insistent questions which had enlisted the 
efforts of Carlyle, of Maurice, and of Kingsley ; those 
questions which yet press upon us unanswered, de- 
manding the service of the best intellect of our time. 
The industrial changes of the last hundred years 
had brouglit not only an enormous increase of wealth, 
but had given new chances of acquiring it to people 
of almost every social class. The early part of the 
eighteenth century had witnessed the rise of the 
merchant class through the expansion of the colonial 
trade ; the latter part of the century saw the rise 
of the manufacturing class, the capitalists. With 
golden prizes dangling before their eyes, the energies 
of the great mass of men had become more and 
more exclusively material and mercantile. In their 
haste to get rich, men became more selfish and grasp- 
ing; they were impelled to forget mercy and pity, to 
forget the feeling for the worth of individual man- 
hood. The love of money, always a powerful factor 
in human society, became more and more the great 
temptation of the modern world. We have watched 
the growth of the new love of nature ; naturc^s 
fairest scenes were scored by railroads and scorched 
and blackened by the soot and grime of factories 



HECENT WEITERS 433 

We have watched the growth of tlie new pity for 
man ; in the early part of our century men, women, 
and little children were sacrificed to Mammon 
by labor in mills and factories so prolonged and 
severe that it stunted and twisted their miserable 
bodies and darkened their miserable souls.* When 
Ruskin began his work as an economist many 
of these evils had indeed been removed, but the 
master passion of the age remained unchanged. This 
modern spirit has been assailed by Wordsworth, 
by Matthew Arnold, by Tennyson, but no protest 
has been more direct and momentous than that of 
Ruskin. To discuss, or even to state, his economic 
theory, set forth in such books as JJiito This Last 
(1862), the Crown of Wild Olive (1866), Time and 
Tide (1868), or Fors Clavigera (begun 1871), papers 
addressed to the workingmen of England, would 
take us beyond our proper limit. It may be said 
briefly that it is essentially an attempt to apply 
the ethical teachings of Christianity to the actual 
conduct of business and government. The competi- 
tion on which the Avhole structure of our society is 
founded Ruskin declares to be "a law of death," to 
be set side by side with anarchy in its destructive 
power. The true foundations of a state are not 
liberty, but obedience ; not mutual antagonism, but 
mutual help.f Looked at purely from the stand- 
point of the literary critic, the books in which these 
strange doctrines are unfolded and elaborated are 

* See Gibbins' Indust. History of England, for account oi 
passage of factory laws. 
f Modern Pairders, vol. v. p. 205. 



434 INTHODtJCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

substantial additions to English prose. In the Mod^ 
em Painters, and other early books, Ruskin had 
proved himself master of a style unprecedented in 
its wealth of poetry and beauty, but in these latei 
books all adornment is severely subordinated to the 
strong utterance of the thought. Ruskin himselt 
seems to have been conscious of obic change. " Hap- 
pily," he says, in a lecture delivered in 1868, "the 
power of using such pleasant language — if indeed it 
ever were mine — is passing away from me , and 
whatever I am now able to say at all, I find my- 
self forced to say with great plainness. For my 
thoughts have changed also as my words have." ^ 
The power had not, indeed, passed away, but we can 
perceive that the growing weight of thought and 
earnestness brought greater plainness and directness 
of s|)eech. If Ruskin's later style has lost something 
in pure beauty, it has gained in simplicity, in inten- 
sity, in pure power. There is, as in the Fors Clavi- 
gera, directness, tenderness, strong outbursts of 
denunciation and scorn, with an undertone of satiric 
humor that recalls the power, but not the malignity, 
of Swift.f Such writers as Macaulay, Carlyle, and 
Ruskin force us to realize the greatness of our mod- 
ern literature in the sphere of prose. Since the time 
of Addison English prose has steadily broadened in 
range and increased in literary importance. When 
we place with the three great prose writers whose 

* The Mystery of Life, and Its Arts. 

f Cf Ruskin's recommendation of baked clay as a cheap 
diet, in Fors Clavigera, with Swift's '* Modest Proposal for pre- 
venting the Children of poor People from being a Burden." 



RECENT WRITERS 435 

work we have just considered tlie masters of an 
earlier generation — the essayist, Thomas De Quincey 
(1785-1859), and Walter Savage Landor (1775- 
1864) — and when we add to these great names the 
men w^ho succeeded them — Froude, J. R. Green, 
S. R. Gardner, and Kinglake, in history, Matthew 
Arnold, Walter Pater, and others, in criticism — 
we are justified in saying that while in poetry modern 
England has fallen behind the greatest achievements 
of her past, in the art of prose writing she has cer- 
tainly equaled, and probably surpassed, the produc- 
tion of any former period. 

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) stands out from this 
group as peculiarly representative of the middle 
years of the century. He was the son of 
br. Thomas Arnold, the great head- JJ^*^^ 
master of Rugby, whose personal force 
was a power for good in so many lives, and both 
his father and grandfather were clergymen of the 
Church of England. He was thus rooted and 
grounded in faith both by inheritance and early in- 
fluences. But from these deeply religious surround- 
ings of his boyhood, Ar.nold was plunged at Oxford 
into the midst of that conflict of beliefs and no-beliefs, 
that jar of doubt and speculation, which marked a 
time of spiritual crisis. At Oxford, indeed, there 
were "great voices in the air,"* the voice of New- 
man, pleading for a solution of all doubt by simple 
faith, a solution which Arnold afterward declared, 
to speak frankly, was " impossible." * Arnold, who 

* Lecture on "Emerson," in Discourses in America* 



436 IXTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITER ATUEE 

had tlius abruptly passed from the shelter of his 
father's influence into the heat of the conflict of his 
time, seems to have had a certain power to sympa- 
thize alike Avith the teachings -of Rugby and the 
doubts of Oxford. His nature had a positive and 
emotional, perhaps even a religious strain, but this 
ran through a temperament austerely and coldly 
intellectual. Emotionally he apparently felt the 
need of faith, but his intellect, as hard and keen as 
highly tempered steel, was inexorable in its demands 
for exact demonstration, for precision and lucidity of 
thought. A great part of Arnold's poetry is the 
reflection of tliis inward conflict between these incom= 
patible elements of his nature. He looks backward 
with regret and longing, while he suffers himself to 
be borne along on the relentless currents of his time. 
In his prose he rebukes, or reasons, or criticises, he 
builds up systems of conduct ; but there remains 
within him a void which neither his sovereio:n remedy 
of ^'culture "nor any mere ethical system can fill. 
In his poetry he laments the loss of that which he 
discards, and half shrinks from conclusions which he 
feels constrained to accept. Lingering in the long- 
silent courts of the Carthusians, that speak to him of 
the medieval centuries of simple faith, he pictures him- 
self as 

*' Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be born, 
TVith nowhere yet to rest my head, 
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn ; 
Their faith, my tears, the world deride — 
I come to shed them at their side." * 
* Stanzas from The Grande Chartreuse. 



RECENT WRITERS 437 

Yet we must not think of Arnold's poetry as a 
mere wail of regret or outburst of despair. On the 
contrary its prevailing note is self-reliance • help 
must come from the soul itself, for 

" The fountains of our life are all Tvithin." 

He preaches fortitude and courage in the face of the 
mysterious and the inevitable — a courage indeed for- 
lorn and pathetic enough in the eyes of some — and he 
constantly takes refuge in a kind of stoical resigna- 
tion. He delights in showing us human sorrow, 
only to withdraw our minds from it by leading us to 
contemplate tlie infinite calm of nature, beside w^hich 
our transitory woes are reduced to a mere fretful 
insignificance. All the beautiful poem of Tristram 
and Iseult is built up on the skillful alternation of 
two themes. We pass from the feverish, wasting, 
and ephemeral struggle of human passion and desire, 
into an atmosphere that shames its heat and fume by 
an immemorial coolness and repose ; 

** We, O Nature, depart, 
Thou survivest us ! this, 
This, I know, is the law. 
Thou . . . 

Watchest us, Nature, throughout 
Mild and inscrutably calni." * 



Arnold's poetry has an exquisitely refined, finished, 
and delicate beauty ; it reveals the critic, the thinker, 
and, above all, the man of a fine but exclusive culture, 

* '' The Youth of Man." 



438 INIiRODTJCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Set almost wholly in a single key, there are times 

when we weary of its persistent and pathetic minor. 

It is often coldly academic rather than warm with 

human life and passion, and we are apt to miss in its 

thin, intellectual atmosphere, just that large-souled 

and broadly human sympathy which it is difficult to 

associate with Arnold himself. At times, as in the 

fifth of the series entitled SwitzerUind^ we feel under 

the exquisite beauty of the verses an unwonted throb 

of passion, and then, as in the poem last mentioned, 

we touch the highest point of Arnold's poetic art. 

In his work as literary critic, Arnold has occupied 

a high place among the foremost prose writers of the 

time. His style is in marked contrast to 
jk a critic 

the dithyrambic eloquence of Carlyle, 

or to Ruskin's pure and radiant coloring. It is a 
quiet style, restrained, clear, discriminating, incisive, 
with little glow of ardor or passion. Notwithstand- 
ing its scrupulous assumption of urbanity, it is often 
a merciless style, indescribably irritating to an op- 
ponent by its undercurrent of sarcastic humor, and 
its calm air of assured superiority. By his insistence 
on a high standard of technical excellence, and by 
his admirable presentation of certain principles of 
literary judgment, Arnold performed a great work 
for literature. On the other hand, we miss here, as 
in his poetry, the human element, the comprehensive 
sympathy that we recognize in the criticism of Car- 
iyle. Yet Carlyle could not- have written the essay 
On translating Horner^ with all its scholarly dis- 
crimination in style and technique, any more than 
Arnold could have produced Carlyle's large-hearted 



RECENT WRITERS 439 

essay on Burns, Arnold's varied energy and highly 
trained intelligence have been felt in many different 
fields. He has won a peculiar and honorable place 
in the poetry of the century ; he has excelled as lit- 
erary critic, he has labored in the cause of education, 
and finally, in his Culture and Anarchy , he has set 
forth his scheme of social reform, and in certain later 
books has made his contribution to contemporary 
thought. 

In no direction has this development of prose been 
more remarkable than in that of the novel, the 
distinctive literary form of the modern 
world. Since the publication of Rich- Ifl^f^^^^^ 
ardson's Pamela, in 1740, the range of 
the novel has immensely broadened, and its impor- 
tance as a recognized factor in our intellectual and 
social life has surprisingly increased. William God- 
win (1756-1836) employed the novel as a vehicle of 
opinion. His Caleb Williams (1794) was one of the 
earliest of these novels with a purpose, of which 
there are so many examples in later fiction. Maria 
Edgeworth (1767-1849), the autlior of Castle Rack- 
rent, The Abse7itee, ITeleri, and otlier novels, has been 
called the creator of the novel of national manners. 
By her pictures of Irish life she did somewhat the 
same service for that country that Scott, on a larger 
scale, was soon to perform for his beloved Scotland ; 
she gave it a place in literature. Shortly before 
Scott began to create the historical novel, Jane 
Austen (1775-1817) began her finished and exquisite 
pictures of the daily domestic life of middle-class 
England, in Se7ise a7id Sensibility (1811). In these 



440 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

novels the ordinary aspects of life are depicted wit\^ 
the minuteness and fidelity of the miniature painter, 
yet their charming and unfailing art saves the ordi- 
nary from becoming tiresome or commonplace. Miss 
Austen has found worthy successors, but no supe- 
rior, in her cliosen field. The Cranford of Eliza- 
beth Gaskell (1810-1866) is a masterly study of the 
little world of English provincial life, as are the 
Chronides of Carlingford of Margaret Oliphant 
(1820). Mrs. Gaskell is further remembered for 
work of a more tragic and powerful order than tlie 
quaint and pathetic humor of Cranford, Her first 
novel, Mary Barton (1848), laid bare before the 
reading world the obscure life and struggles of the 
poor who toiled in the great manufactories of Man- 
chester. Perhaps the subject is too monotonous and 
too mournful for the highest art, but the book bears 
on ev^ry page the evidence of insight and of truth. 

The Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet, of Charles 
Kingsley (1849), the story of a London apprentice 
who becomes involved in the Chartist agitations, 
shows the same sympathetic interest in the heavy 
burdens of the poor, and in that unhappy antagonism 
between employer and employed which remains one 
of the unsettled problems of our time. This widen- 
ing of the sphere of the novel to include the trials 
or tragedies of the humblest phases of life is a 
further evidence of that broadening sympathy with 
the race of man, which we have seen grow stronger 
in the poetry of the preceding century as ideas of 
democracy gained in power. 

But the life of the outcast and the poor has found 



BECENT WRITERS 441 

its most famous if not its most tratliful chronicler in 
Charles Dickens (1812-1870), one of the 
greatest novelists of the epoch. Dickens ^^^^^ 
was the second of eight children. His 
earliest associations were with the humbler and harsher 
side of life in a metropolis, as his father, John Dickens, 
a clerk in the Navy Pay-office, was transferred from 
Portsmouth to London in 1814. The knowledge thus 
hardly gained through early struggles and privations, 
became a storehouse from which Dickens drew freely 
in his later work. The Marsh alsea Prison, where 
John Dickens was confined for debt, is described in 
Zittle Dorrit ; in David Copperfield, the most auto- 
biographical of the novels, David's experiences as a 
wine merchant's apprentice may have been suggested 
by Warren's blacking factory, where Dickens 
worked as a boy ; while his youthful struggles with 
shorthand and reporting are reflected in Copperfield's 
later history. Remembering the great novelist's 
early experience, it seems but natural that he should 
have chosen to let in the sun and air on some of the 
shabbier and darker phases of existence ; depicting 
types of many social gradations ; obscure respecta- 
bility, the vagrants and adventurers in the outer 
circles of society, down, as in Oliver Twist (1837- 
1838), to the pick-pocket and the murderer. There 
is Jo, the London street waif of Bleak House 
(1852-1853), "allers a-movin'on"; Jingle, the ga}' 
and voluble impostor oi Pickwick (1836-1837); and 
that questionable fraternity, the Birds of Prey, tlmt 
flit about the dark places of the Thames in Ovr 
Mutual Friend (1864-1865). Through this portrnyal 



442 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of the under strata of society there runs a strongs 
perhaps a sometimes too apparent moral purpose ; 
yet take us where he will, Dickens' art is always 
pure, sound, and wholesome. 

It is as a humorist that Dickens is at his best. 
There is a whimsical and ludicrous extravagance in 
liis humor, an irresistible ingenuity in the ridiculous, 
peculiar to him alone. From the time when a 
delighted people waited in rapturous impatience for 
the forthcoming number of Pickwick^ to the publica- 
tion of the unfinished Edioin Drood (1870), nineteenth 
century England laid aside her weariness and her 
problems to join in Dickens' overflowing, infectious 
laughter. When we are ungrateful enough to be criti- 
cal of one who has rested so many by his genial and 
kindly fun, we must admit that Dickens was neither a 
profound nor truthful interpreter of life and charac- 
ter. His is for the most part a world of caricature, 
peopled not with real living persons, but with eccen- 
tricities and oddities, skillfully made to seem like 
flesh and blood. We know them from some peculiar- 
ity of speech or manner, some oft-repeated phrase ; 
they are painted from without ; we are rarely en- 
abled to get inside of their lives and look out at 
the world through their eyes. The result is often 
but a clever and amusing burlesque of life, not 
life itself. It may also be admitted that we feel 
at times, in Dickens, the absence of that atmos- 
phere of refinement and cultivation which is an 
unobtrusive but inseparable part of the art of Thack- 
eray. Without detracting from some famous and 
beautiful scenes, Dickens' pathos is often forced and 



BECENT WRITEBS 443 

premeditated, his sentiment shallow, while there are 
heights from which he is manifestly shut out. When 
he attempts to draw a gentleman or an average 
mortal distinguished by no special absurdities, the 
result is apt to be singularly insipid and lifeless. 
Notwithstanding these shortcomings, Dickens has 
won notable successes outside the field of pure humor. 
His Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a powerful story, 
quite different from his usual manner, and many 
scenes throughout his other books, as the famous 
description of the storm in David Copperjield^ are 
triumphs of tragic power. 

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) is the 
keen but kindly satirist of that surface world of 
frivolity and fashion into which the art «^.,,. 
of Dickens so seldom penetrates. Thack- Makepeace 
eray was born at Calcutta, but was early Thackeray, 
sent to England for his education. He had some- 
thing of that regular training which Dickens lacked, 
going to Cambridge from the Charter-house School 
in London. He left college, however, shortly after 
entering, to study art on the Continent, and finally, 
losing his money, he returned to England, and about 
1837 drifted into literature. After writing much 
for periodicals, he made his first great success in 
Yanity Fair (1847-1848). In this book, under its 
satiric and humorous delineation of a world of hol- 
lowness and pretense, runs the strong current of a 
deep and serious purpose. " Such people there are," 
Thackeray writes, stepping "down from the plat- 
form," like his master, Fielding, to speak in his own 
person — '^ such people there are living and flourisliing 



444 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in the world — Faithless, Hopeless, Charitj^less ; let 
us have at thera, dear friends, with might and main. 
Some there are, and very successful, too, mere quacks 
and fools ; and it was to combat and expose such as 
these, no doubt, that laughter was made.*" 

The passage is better than any outside comment on 
the spirit of Thackeray's work ; only the shallow and 
undiscriminating reader fails to see that Thackeray's 
seriousness is deeper and more vital than his cynicism ; 
that though the smile of the man of the world be on 
his lips, few hearts are more gentle, more compassion- 
ate, more tender ; that though he is quick to scorn, 
few eyes have looked out on this unintelligible world 
through more kindly or more honest tears. Satirist 
as he is, he kneels with the genuine and whole-souled 
devotion of Chaucer, of Shakespeare, and of Milton, 
before the simple might of innocence and of good- 
ness. In the midst of this world of Yanity Fah\ with 
its pettiness, its knavery, and its foolishness, he places 
the unspoiled Amelia and the honest and faithful 
Major Dobbin. If in Pendennis we have the world 
as it looks to the idlers in the Major's club windows, 
we have also Laura, and "Pen's" confiding mother, 
apart from it, and unspotted by its taint. But more 
beautiful than all other creations of Thackeray's 
reverent and loving nature is the immortal presence 
of Colonel Newcome, the man whose memory we 
hold sacred as that of one we have loved — the strong, 
humble, simple-minded gentleman, the grizzled 
soldier with the heart of a little child. In such 
characters Thackeray, too, preaches to us, in his 
* Vanity Fair, vol. i. chap. viiL 




WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 



RECENT WRITERS 445 

own fashion, the old lesson dear to lofty souls, 
that 

** Virtue may be assailed, but never Imrt : 
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled."* 

So he echoes Scott's dying injunction to Lockhart : 
"Be a good man, my dear," by showing us, in the 
corruption of much that is mean and vile, that beauty 
of holiness which can 

'* redeem nature from the general curse/' 

that fair flower of simple goodness which, blossoming 
in tangled and thorny w^ays, sweetens for us the 
noisome places of the earth. 

In addition to his work as painter of contemporary 
manners, Thackeray has enriched the literature by 
two remarkable historical novels, Henry Esmond 
(1852), and its sequel. The Yirginians (1857-1859). 
In the first of these we have the fruits of Thackeray's 
careful and loving study of eigliteenth century Eng- 
land, a period with which he w^as especially identified, 
and which he had treated critically with extraordinary 
charm and sympathy in his Lectures on the English 
Humorists (published 1853). Esmond \s> one of the 
greatest, possibly the greatest historical novel in 
English fiction. The story is supposed to be told by 
Esmond himself, and the book seems less that of a 
modern writing about the past than the contem- 
porary record of the past itself. Nothing is more 
wonderful in it than the art wath w^hich Thackeray 
abandons his usual manner to identify himself with 

* Milton's Comua, p> 177, supra. 



446 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the narrator he has created. Yet in this, perhaps. 
we should rather see the real tender-hearted Thack- 
eray, his thin veil of cynicism thrown aside. 

Thackeray's style is exceptionally finished and 
charming ; light, graceful, and incisive, it places 
him among the greatest prose masters of English 
fiction. 

So many able and distinguished writers of the Vic- 
torian period have chosen the novel as their favorite 
or exclusive form of literary expression, and so 
familiar is their work, that even a mere enumeration 
of them is here both impossible and unnecessary. 
Their works, with that of countless others whose 
books represent every shade of merit or demerit, and 
reproduce almost every ripple of thought or discus- 
sion, are among the best-known influences of our 
modern life. 

Among the many women who have gained dis- 
tinction as writers of fiction since the appearance of 
Miss Burney's Evelina (1778), one at least cannot be 
passed over, even in the briefest survey. 

Mary Ann, or Marian Evans (George Eliot) was 
born November 22, 1819, at South Farm, Arbury, a 
" small, low-roofed farmhouse " in War 
* wickshire. Her father, George Evans, 
was agent to Sir Roger Newdigate, of Arbury Hall, 
within the boundaries of whose estate the farm lay. 
Arbury Hall is in the northeastern corner of the 
county, some thirty miles from Stratford. It lies in 
the same rich and well-watered region that nourished 
the youth of Shakespeare ; a sleepy, abundant land, 
prosperous, and steeped in drowsy centuries of quiet 



RECENT WRITERS 447 

In some part of this rich Midland district^ at Griff 
House, near Nuneaton, at school in Coventry, or at 
Foleshill on its outskirts, the first thirty-two years of 
George Eliot's life were passed. She was identified 
with its local interests by birth and by daily contact ; 
her earliest and tenderest recollections clustered round 
it, and the grace of its liberal beautj^ sanctified by 
memory, remained with her until the end. Her early 
surroundings, she tells us, 

** Were but my growing self, are part of me ; 
My present Past, my root of piety." * 

This English provincial life, thus flowing in the very 
currents of her blood, became the living material of 
her art. She was at once of it, and, by the great- 
ness of her genius, apart from it ; able both to 
depict it from within, and to feel it from without. 
Birth and association thus qualified her to become its 
great painter, as emphatically as Dickens was the 
great painter of the slums and of the poor, or Thack- 
eray of the London clubs and drawing rooms. The 
rural or provincial background which is the setting 
of so many of her stories is painted from reality, and 
many of her best known characters were drawn from 
or suggested by the Warwickshire people she had 
early known and loved. 

Ordinary and uneventful as these early years in 
Warwickshire may seem at first, careful study will 
but strengthen our conviction of their importance in 
determining the broad character of her art. In a 
poem full of tender memories, in which she describes 

* Poems, Brother and Sister 



448 INTBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 

tier early rambles with her brother, she lets us share 
the secrets of her childhood. 

'* He was the elder, and a little man 
Of forty inches, bound to show no dread. 
And I the girl that puppy-like now ran, 
Now lagged behind my brother's larger tread. 

If he said * Hush I ' I tried to hold my breath ; 
Wherever he said * Come/ I stepped in faith."* 

In 27ie Mill on the Floss^ in Maggie Tulliver's dim 
longings and spiritual growing-pains, we gain an 
insight into those years in which, with much stress 
and hunger of the spirit, the childish horizon widened. 
At sixteen George Eliot lost her mother and left 
school to keep house for her father, gaining some 
experience of farm-life which she afterward used in 
her description of the Poyser household in Adam 
Bede (1859). In 1841 she became intimate with a 
family named Bray, wealthy people who lived in 
%\\Q vicinity of Coventry, and under their inJBuence 
abandoned forever her faith in Christianity as a 
divine revelation, seeing in it only a human creation 
of man's hopes and needSo Her nature, though prone 
to speculation, was by no means wanting in religious 
feeling, and the comparative suddenness of her loss 
of faith may impress us as unaccountable. In think- 
ing of this we should remember her peculiar dis- 
position. With all her masculine strength and 
activity of intellect, she was singularly susceptible 
to influence, and dependent to an unusual degree 
upon the help and encouragement of others. Strengtb 

^BrotJier and Sister, 



KECENT WKITERS 449 

of mind does not necessarily imply strength of char« 
acter, althougli we are too apt to confuse the two, 
and this fact will help us to understand more than 
one incident in George Eliot's life. From the first 
her tastes had been distinctly studious and scholarly, 
and in 1846 she began her literary career by translat- 
ing a German work in harmony with the skeptical 
ideas she had adopted. Her home was broken up by 
her father's death in 1849, and two years later, after 
a short Continental tour, she settled in London as 
assistant editor of Tlie Westminster Review^ to which 
she had already contributedo Her Warwickshire life 
was over, and, like Shakespeare when he first turned 
his face toward London, she stood at the entrance to 
a new world. The 'Westminster Review numbered 
Herbert Spencer, James and Harriet Martineau, and 
many other distinguished writers among its contribu- 
tors, and George Eliot's connection with it naturally 
gave her a place in literary circles. 

Among others she met Mr. George Henry Lewes, 
a discursive, brilliant, but somewhat erratic writer, 
who combined keen literary sympathies with a dis- 
tinctly scientific and philosophical bent. A deep 
attachment grew up between them, but marriage 
was impossible, as Mr. Lewes' wife, from whom he 
was separated, was still alive, and through a techni- 
cality of the law a divorce could not be obtained. 
Believing the law unjust, George Eliot took a step 
which, even in its purely social or legal aspects, must 
be looked upon as a serious error. She entered upon 
a lifelong union with Mr. Lewes, which, it must be 
remembered, was in her eyes a true marriage. It is 



450 mraOBUCTIOK TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

no justification of this most unfortunate union that 
it proved a "marriage of true minds," most impor- 
tant in its effects upon George Eliot's literary career. 
It was at the suggestion of Mr. Lewes that George 
Eliot turned from her distinctly scholarly and criti- 
cal labors as essayist and translator to begin that 
work in fiction on which her fame mainly rests. 
Heretofore her writing had represented chiefly the 
scholarly side of her mind ; it had been the outcome 
of her studies of books. Now, under Mr. Lewes' en- 
couragement, the other side of her genius declared 
itself by the publication in JBlachwoocVs of her first 
story, Scenes of Clerical Life; The Sad Fortunes of 
the Bev. Amos Barton (January, 1857). This sud- 
den transference of energy into a totally new chan- 
nel is one of the most surprising incidents of our 
literary history. From one aspect it is by no means 
without parallel : Scott abandoned poetry for ro' 
mance writing ; De Foe at sixty turned from jour< 
Ealism and pamphleteering and produced Bohinson 
Crusoe. But the singularity in George Eliot's case 
is not that at thirty-eight she discovered within her 
a great gift that she had never dreamed herself pos- 
sessed of, it is that it was left for another to make 
this discovery for her ; that this critical change in 
her career was due not to an impulse from within, 
but to an influence from without. Thus again, as at 
the time of her contact with the Brays, we are im- 
pressed by her extreme dependence on others. 
From this "new era" in her life, as George Eliot 
called it, we are chiefly occupied in noticing the 
development of this strangely discovered gift, and in 



i 



RECENT WRITERS 451 

marking tlie establishment and growth of her fame. 
Adam Becle^ her first long stoiy, and one of the most 
powerful and spontaneous of her books, appeared in 
1859, and it was felt "that a new power had arisen 
in English letters." Adam Bede was followed by 
masterpiece after masterpiece at intervals of one, 
two, or three years ; thoughtful books of substantial 
workmanship, not fluently written, with Scott's easy 
joy in power, but with unspeakable eifort, self- dis- 
cipline, and toil. The Spanish Gypsy (1868), a 
dramatic poem, marked a new literary departure, but 
George Eliot's poetry, though thoughtful and me- 
chanically correct, is distinctly inferior to her prose. 
Mr. Lewes died in 1878, and barely two years later 
the world was electrified by the news of George 
Eliot's marriage to a young London banker, Mr. 
John Walter Cross. At this time George Eliot was 
slightly over sixty and Mr. Cross some twenty years 
her junior. When the intensity of her devotion to 
Mr, Lewes is taken into account we are inclined to 
regard this second marriage as but another proof 
that George Eliot's nature was dependent rather than 
self-reliant. " Li her moral development," wa*ites 
Mr. Cross, " she showed from her earliest years the 
trait that was most marked in her through life, 
namely, the absolute need of some one person who 
should be all in all to her, and to whom she should 
be all in all." In the fall of 1880 her health was 
failing, and in December of that year she died sud- 
denly after a brief illness. 

George Eliot stands easily in the front rank of 
English novelists ; she must^ moreover, be recognized 



452 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

as one of the most influential and distinctly represen- 
tative writers of her time. Whatever 
as^m)velist° views we may hold of the true scope 
and purpose of fiction as an art, we can 
hardly escape assigning to George Eliot's w^ork a 
position of the highest significance and importance 
in the history of nineteenth century thought. The 
art of Thackeray may seem to us finer and less 
labored ; we may miss in such a novel as Daniel 
Deronda that great master's half playful cynicism 
and exquisite lightness of touch. Scott's spontaneous, 
instinctive power of telling a story for the story's 
sake may appeal to us more strongly, the romantic 
twilight, the old-world enchantment of the Waverley 
Novels may bring us more of that blessed rest from 
the burdens of the day which we may consider it the 
true purpose of the novel to bestow. Yet whatever 
we may find or miss in George Eliot's novels, we 
must admit that the}' reveal to us a profound and 
tragically serious student of life. Employing a lit- 
erary form which, in less self-conscious and exacting 
days, was generally looked upon as a means of relax- 
ation, George Eliot's place is rather wuth Ruskin, 
Darwin, Arnold, Browning, or Herbert Spencer, wdth 
"the teachers and seekers after light," the signs of 
trouble often written on their foreheads — than with 
Scott or Jane Austen, with Dickens or Wilkie Col- 
lins. Yet George Eliot is more than a thinker, 
precisely as Browning is more than a thinker; 
both are artists, and give us, not abstract doctrines, 
but a philosophy clothed in the language and em- 
bodied in the living forms of art. Both feel the 




GEORGE ELI OT 



RECENT WRITERS 453 

burdens and obligations laid upon those who in out 
modern time think deeply or feel acutely, and both, 
in harmony with its analytic and questioning spirit, 
are constrained not only to depict but to moralize, tc 
search into the motives and the consequences of con- 
duct, to analyze the subtle constitution of the soul. 
But in this analysis George Eliot is an artist because 
she studies and interprets the soul not merely with 
her intellect but by her true human sympathy, by 
the intensity of her imaginative understanding. A 
scholastic flavor hangs about some of our modern 
guides, as for instance Matthew Arnold, which pro- 
claims them as primarily readers of books. George 
Eliot was a scholar, but she was still more emphat- 
ically a student of life. It is life itself as she has 
seen it and known it, in the farmhouse or the field, 
life in the formative experiences of her own soul, 
which affords her the material for her thought. " I 
have always thought," she writes, "that the most 
fortunate Britons are those whose experience has 
given them a practical share in many aspects of the 
national lot; who have lived among the mixed com- 
monalty, roughing it with them under difficulties, 
knowing how their food tastes to tliem, and getting 
acquainted with their notions and motives, not by 
infereflce, from traditional types in literature, or 
from philosophic theories, but from daily fellowship 
and observation." George Eliot herself was such a 
" fortunate Briton," and her work, like that of Shake- 
speare, of Burns, of Carlyle, and of Dickens, rests 
securely on her sympathetic understanding of the 
daily life of man. The truth of her insight into the 



454 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

most ordinary, and as we might consider them, com« 
monplace lives, her tenderness for them, her percep* 
tion of the pathos and the wonder of their narrow 
world, is one of the finest traits in her character and 
her art. In her earliest story, after telling us that 
the Rev. Amos Barton, whose fortunes she is describ- 
ing, was " palpably and unmistakably commonplace," 
she goes on to speak of commonplace people in 
words which may be taken as a text of all her 
work. The large majority of our fellow-creatures, 
she declares, are " simply men of complexions 
more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or 
less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace 
people — many of them — bear a conscience, and have 
felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right ; 
they have their unspoken sorrows and their sacred 
joys ; their hearts have perhaps gone out toward 
their first-born, and they have mourned over the irre- 
claimable deado Nay, is there not a pathos in their 
very insignificance — in our comparison of their dim 
and narrow existence with the glorious possibilities 
of that human nature which they share ?" * 

Here is that democratic spirit of human brother- 
hood of which we have so often spoken, uttering 
itself again through literature. Reflecting on these 
words we measure again the distance that the Eng- 
land of Victoria has traveled from the England of 
Pope. It is not enough for us to appreciate that 
George Eliot shows us ordinary people under ordi- 
nary conditions ; others have done this. Her dis- 
tinction is that she feels and makes us feel a some' 
* The Sad Fortunes of the Rev, Amos Barton^ chap, v. 



BECENT WRITERS 455 

thing in ordinary lives which before was not apparent. 
Perhaps when he looks into his own soul no man 
truly deems himself commonplace. George Eliot 
gives us such a glimpse into the souls of others. 
Henoe her characters are substantial living people, 
filling us with an intense sense of reality. Looking 
into our own lives we know that their secret vicis- 
situdes are true. Such art is comparatively inde- 
pendent of plot and incident. In order to interest 
us in her characters George Eliot is not forced, as 
Dickens was, to depend upon outward eccentricities 
or cheat us into a conviction of reality by the minute 
accuracy of the stage setting. In Tom and Maggie 
TuUiver, in Dorothea Brooke, in Tito Melema, or in 
Gwendolen Harleth, we enter into and identify our- 
seWes with the inner experience of a human soul. 
These and the other great creations of George Eliot's 
g^^nius are not set characters ; like ourselves they are 
subject to cliange, acted upon by others, acting on 
others in their turn ; molded by the daily pressure 
of things within and things without. We are made 
to understand the growth or the degeneration of 
their souls ; how Tito slips half consciously down 
the easy slopes of self-indulgence, or Romola learns 
through suffering to ascend the heights of self-renun- 
ciation. This contrast between the human craving 
for happiness regardless of consequences, between 
the simple desire for pleasure so pathetically inherent 
in the young and undisciplined, and the stern obliga- 
tion to sacrifice our pleasure to the common good, is 
eminently characteristic of George Eliot. She reiter- 
ates the hard lesson with inexorable earnestness, that 



456 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the weakness which prompts us to thoughtless self- 
gratification is a wickedness which brings with it 
inevitable retribution. There are few downright vil- 
laips in her books, but in almost every novel are cliar- 
acters that fail through selfishness or a weak inability 
to deny themselves the things that seem pleasant. 
Beside Tito Melema we naturally place the amiable and 
yielding Arthur Donnithorne, and in the same general 
group are Godfrey Cass, Grandcourt in his colossal and 
imperturbable egotism, and poor desiccated Casaubon 
who, selfishly unconscious of the sacrifice, suffers Doro- 
thea's fresh and ardent womanhood to be immolated 
to him and to his "Key to all Mythologies." In 
Adam Bede is Hetty Sorel, with her soft, girlish 
beauty, '^ seeing nothing in this wide world but the 
little history of her own pleasures and pains"; in 
Felix Holt, Esther Lyon, whom Felix declares to be 
"no better than a bird trimming its feathers and 
picking about after what pleases it"; in Middle- 
march, Rosamond Yincy, who, we are told, " would 
never do anything that was disagreeable to her," and 
in Daniel Deronda, Gwendolen Harleth, set between 
Grandcourt's selfishness and Deronda's self-sacrifice, 
"busy," at first, "with her small inferences of the 
way in which she could make her life pleasant." 
Contrasted with such characters, marring their own 
lives and those of others by their wrong ideas of 
life's purpose, are those who are strong enough with 
deliberate self-abnegation to choose "the painful 
right." Disciplined by suffering, their personal 
griefs are merged in the peace that comes from self- 
surrender. Yet self-sacrifice is insisted on by Georga 



KECENT WRITERS 457 

Eliot, not because of an earthly peace or a future 
reward; right-doing is often a hard thing ; wi'ong- 
doing is often a pleasant and an easy thing, but 
^' because right is right " we are to follow it " in 
scorn of consequence." Fedalma exclaims at the 
crisis of her fate : 

'* Ob, all my bliss was in my love, but now 
I m?y not taste it ; some deep energy 
Compels me to choose hunger." 

Such a moral tone is both lofty and in the highest 
degree austere and uncompromising. Not only are 
the inexorable claims of duty constantly forced home 
to us, but in the performance of duty George Eliot 
recognized no divine helper ; she is strengthened by 
no hope of a reward hereafter. The individual loses 
that the race may gain. As surely as Byron stood 
for individualism, hurling his maledictions against 
the universe because it would not permit him to enjoy, 
so George Eliot stood for altruism, teaching that the 
death of selfishness is our road and the world's road 
to progress and to peace. Such doctrines place her 
with the great moral teachers of her century, but 
render her books pre-eminently exacting and almost 
somber. Her novels move under a heavy weight 
of tragic earnestness ; admirable as is their art, 
graphic and telling as is their humor, they are weighed 
down with a burden of philosophic teaching which 
in the later books, especially Daniel Deronda^ 
grows too heavy for the stor^^ and injures the 
purely literary value. "My books," she writes, "are 
deeply serious things to me, and come out of al) 



458 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the painful discipline, all the most hardly learned 
lessons of my past life." From the literary aspect 
perhaps Silas Marner is her most artistically perfect 
story, and Midcllemarch her greatest work. In the 
latter book that hunger for an unattainable and far- 
off good, which George Eliot so frequently expresses, 
is set amid the stifling atmosphere of modern society. 
Trying to sacrifice their lives to others, both Doro- 
thea and Lydgate are caught in the mesh of circum- 
stances, and fail. "There is no sorrow," Dorothea 
exclaims, "I have thought more about than that — to 
love what is good, to try to reach it, and fail." And 
Lydgate feels that in her words he has "found room 
for the full meaning of his grief." But quite aside 
from their teaching, it is the art of these great books — 
their poetic beauty of style, their subtle understand- 
ing of the lives of men and women— that places them 
with the great imaginative productions of the litera- 
ture. 

While the life and aspirations of our age find their 
most popular and influential interpretation in the 

T> J. ^ novel, the Victorian era has made some 
Kecent poetry. ' 

lasting additions to the great body of 
English poetry. Poetry has been studied and prac- 
ticed as an art with a care which recalls the age of 
Anne, and even minor writers have acquired an 
extraordinary finish and a mastery of novel poetic 
forms. This attention to form is commonly thought 
to have begun with Keats, and since 1830 Tennyson 
has proved himself one of the most versatile and 
consummate artists in the history of English verse. 
As is usual in periods of scrupulous and conscious 



RECENT W111TER8 459 

art, this recent poetry has been graceful or medita- 
tive, rather than powerful and passionate. It excels 
in the ha*ic rather than in the dramatic form ; it 
delights in expressing the poet's own shifting moods, 
and as a rule it leaves to the novel the vigorous 
objective portrayal of life. It finds a relief in escap- 
ing from the confined air of our modern life into the 
freedom and simplicity of nature, and it has never 
lost that subtle and inspired feeling for the mystery 
of the visible world which came into poetry in the 
previous century. The supremacy of science and 
the advance of deraocrac}^, the two motive forces in 
Englisli life and thought since 1830, have acted on 
modern poetry in different ways. There are poets 
w^lio think themselves fallen on evil days ; who, 
repelled by the sordidness, ugliness, and materialism 
of a scientific and mercantile generation, seek to 
escape in poetry to a world less vulgar and more 
to their minds. Like Keats, they ignore the peculiar 
hopes and perplexities of their age, to wander 
after the all-suflScient spirit of beauty. This ten- 
dency is seen in the early classic poems of Matthew 
Arnold (1822-1888), in the Atalanta m Calydon 
of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 — ), or in the 
poems of those associated with the English Pre- 
Raphaelite brotherhood, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
(1828-1882), with his odor of Italy and his rich 
and curious felicity of phrase. Rossetti's poetic 
world lies beyond the confines of our experience, a 
shadowy region lit by another light than that of 
common day. A region of uncertain shapes and 
vague suggestions, ruled by mystery, wonder, beauty^ 



460 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and love. In his poetry something of the unearthly 
spirit of Blake and of the poet of The AncAent 
Mariner^ something of the magic of Keats' La 
Belle Dame Sans 3Ierci, survives. " The Renais- 
sance ^i Wonder," says Theodore Watts, " culminates 
in Rosisetti's poetry as it culminates in his painting," 
To some^ as to the critic from whom we have just 
quoted, Rossetti's poetry seems permeated with " the 
ever-present apprehension of the spiritual world"; 
to others it is less spiritual than unreal, not lit by 
Shelley's clear ethereal radiance, but touched with 
a warm, sensuous, and highly wrought beauty. 
Whichever may be the true view, it is beyond ques- 
tion that in such masterpieces as Rose Mary, Tht 
Blessed Bamozel, The Ballad of the White Ship, 
The King^s Tragedy, and in many of his sonnets, 
Rossetti has made a unique and considerable con- 
tribution to the poetry of our time. 

This poetry of evasion, as it may be called, is 

seen also in the early work of William Morris 

(1834-1896), in his classic study of The 

Tlie poetry ^^y^ ^^^^ j^^^^^j^ ^f j^^^^^^ (1867), and 

of evasion. *^ ^ \ /^ 

in his Earthly Paradise (1868-1870), a 

gathering of beautiful stories from the myths and 
legends of many lands. The career of this poet 
is especially significant: it exemplifies not only the 
longing of a beauty-loving nature to escape from a 
sordid and utilitarian age, but also the imperious 
pressure, even on men of such a temper, of social 
issues. Even in The Earthly Paradise, where the 
poet, as 

** The idle singer of an empty day," 



RECENT WBITER8 461 

deliberately turns for relief to the fair world of art, 
there is the subdued but intrusive thread of sadness. 
Even in this eternal land of art the voices of his time 
trouble him. He tells us of pleasant things, as those 
who in that walled garden of Boccaccio beguiled the 
time in the sunshine, but his eyes are troubled as at 
the thought of a plague-stricken city below. In his 
later life he has turned, as Ruskin did, from the 
garden of art, to face the issues of the street. 

Other poets, unsettled by doubts which have come 
with modern science, and unable to reconcile faith 
with the new knowkdge of their time, 
carry into their work that uncertainty QflJ^^^ 
and unbelief which is the moral disease 
of their generation. As we have said, the most charac- 
teristic poetry of Matthew Arnold is the outcome of 
this mood, having in its doubts a forlorn and pathetic 
bravery sadder than open despair. Somewhat tlie 
same tone is present, but animated by a strain of 
greater faith and hope, in the poems of Arnold's 
friend, Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), a man of 
genius and of promise, while James Thomson's City 
of Dreadful Night {1814:) is the poetry of despair. 
It is chiefly by this poem, profoundly original, and 
burdened with a suffocating weight of gloom and 
terror, that Thomson is known. Beside the weary 
anguish of his cry from the abyss, the discontent of 
Byron seems the petulance of a spoiled child. But 
the pathos of Thomson's misery is heightened by a 
study of less familiar poems in which another side of 
his nature is disclosed. From them we learn to see 
in him a marvelous power of abandonment to joy, 



462 INTBODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

only surpassed by his capacity for despair. Few 

poems ill our literature are gladdened with as keen a 

sensibility to beauty as the opening portion of He 

Heard Her Sing, Here the rapture of the artist's 

temperament finds voice, and the verse leaps forward 

with a tumultuous delight in the joy of life. Two 

little idyls, Sunday at Hampstead^ and Sunday Up 

the Hivery are very quiet and full of sunshine ; but 

such poems only serve to intensify by contrast the 

blackness of Thomson's despair. 

Happily the two greatest and most representative 

poets of our epoch, Alfred Tennyson and Robert 

Browning:, belono^ to neither of these 
The poetry ^' .^ . 

of faith and groups. Uittermg widely m manner 

hope. a^j^(j in their theory of art, they have at 

least one point in common. Both face frankly and 
boldly the many questions of their age ; neither 
evading nor succumbing to its intellectual difficulties, 
they still find beauty and goodness in the life of the 
world about them ; holding fast the "things which 
are not seen " as a present reality, they still cherish 
"the faith which looks through death." 

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) is already acknowl- 
edged as the representative English poet of his time. 
So far as contemporary judgment can 

Tennyson. foresee, his work will stand to posterity 
as the most rounded, melodious, and 
adequate expression in poetry of the soul of Victor- 
ian England. Singularly sensitive to the intellectual 
and spiritual perturbations of his time, he has 
responded to its moods, entered into its passing 
phases of thought, and made them the very breath 




LORD TENNYSON 



RECENT WRITERS 463 

and animating principle of his work. He is a lover 
of beauty and his view of life is essentially spiritual, 
yet one great motive power in his work is that 
science which has been the dominant intellectual 
force in his time. 

Close as he has lived to his age in spirit, Tennyson 
has dwelt in communion with Nature, holding him- 
self consistently aloof from active participation in 
the restless and high-pressure life of his generation. 
Shy, morbidly sensitive, silent, except among an 
inner circle of chosen friends, the poet has locked 
himself from his kind with books and nature, a 
remote and keen observer of the conflicts in which he 
did not share ; to whose eyes the whole battlefield lay 
disclosed. 

Thus two great influences seem to have combined 
in Tennyson's life, to render him what he was : 
Nature and books. Like Wordsworth, he was 
country-bred, and shunned the air of cities ; even to 
the last he " still was Nature's priest." But, unlike 
Wordsworth, wlio had but little of the book lover or 
the scholar about him,* Tennyson lived close to his 
time, and to all times, through his love of books. 
On the side of scholarship, Tennyson claims kindred, 
not with Wordsworth but with Milton, who was, 
perhaps, rather the poet of the librar\^ than of the 
fields. Like Milton, he brought to the service of liis 
art all that could be gathered by a lifelong study of 

* Substantiate this statement. F., inter alia, the stor}^ of 
Wordsworth's cutting the pages of Burke witli a knife which 
had been used to butter toast, in De Quincey's Literary 
Reminiscences, chap, xiii., ** Wordsworth and Southey." 



464 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITEKATUKE 

the great productions of the past. His poetry rep* 
resents the best traditions of literature, as truly as 
Browning's represents a distinctly radical element, 
and he constantly delights the scholar by reminiscen- 
ces of his studies of the great poets of antiquity.* 
Through the printed page he felt with no less dis- 
tinctness the pulse of the world of living men with- 
out. The force of these combined influences, books 
and Nature, grows clearer as we recall the story of the 
poet's secluded and uneventful life. 

Alfred Tennyson w^as born August 6, 1809, at 
Somersby, a tiny village in the East Midland region 
of Lincolnshire, where his father, the Rev. George 
Clayton Tennyson, was rector. The country imme- 
diately about Somersby has a richness and beauty 
wanting in many parts of the county ; there is no 
fen-land, but the bills slope softly into rich valleys. 
Here and there are bits of woodland ; near by there 
is a glen where the earth is moist under the shadow 
of the pines. It was into the depth of this glen, 
while the world was mourning a great poet, that the 
boy Tennyson stole away alone, and in the fullness of 
his youthful despair cut in the sandstone the words, 
*^ Byron is dead." Tennyson's work bears witness to 
ihe indelible impress of these early surroundings. 
The explorer recognizes here the brook 

" That loves 
To purl o*er matted cress and ribbed sand 
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves ; '' f 
*F. E. C. Stedman's study of Tennyson and Theocritus, in 
tns Victorian Poets, and the more recent work of Mr. J. Chur« 
ton Collins on the classical element in Tennyson. 
f '' Ode to Memory. " 



KECENT WRITERS 465 

be comes upon a gray, half-ruined grange which 
recalls the desolate retreat of Mariana, or, from a 
neighboring hill, he looks out over the long sweep of 
the " ridged wolds " which, rising from the low levels 
of the plain, stretch away forty miles to the north- 
ward until they meet the distant waters of the 
Humber. 

** Calm and still light on yon great plain 
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
And crowded farms and lessening towers. 
To mingle with the bounding main." * 

The grassy expanse of the Lincolnshire wolds, 
" wide, wild, and open to the air," under a heaven of 
gray cloud, is suggested in the opening lines of '^ The 
Dying Swan," while an allusion like that to "the low 
morass and whispering reed " carries us to the fen- 
land that lay a short distance to the south. We 
must think of the boy Tennyson wandering among 
such scenes, from the first reticent and undemonstra- 
tive, but, we may be sure, living through those 
intense, inward experiences which, often hidden or 
unintelligible to those about, yet make up the true 
life-history of every emotional and imaginative child. 
After some training at home, and in the Grammar 
School at Louth, a town some twenty miles from 
Somersby, Tennyson entered Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, in 1828. Here, shy as he was, he showed 
that he had a rare and beautiful capacity for friend- 
ship. He joined a debating society which included 
among its members James Spedding, F. D. Maurice^ 

• In Memoriam, xi 



466 INTEODrCTION TO ENGLISH LITEBATrRE 

R. C. Trench, and others, the choicest spirits of the 
college.* Above all tlie others was one wliose short 
life is indissoluhly linked with tiie career of Tenny- 
son, Anil in* Henry Hal -an], a young man of rare 
promise and singularly sweet and lovable nature. 
Long before he entered C':''Iege Tennyson had written 
verses, he had even printed a ^-oluiue in conjunction 
with his brother Charles, in 152 7 ; but at Cambridge 
he first made a decided inir^ression by his prize p^oeni 
Tlmhuctoo. In 1S30 TennyS'jn made his real entrance 
into the world of English letters by the publication 
of a slim volume. P^/t/// 6'. Chierly Lyrical.. TTe can 
see now, in this little book, the advent of a new poet. 
It is largely t::e work of an experimentalist in meter 
and melody, in. eluding as it does such tone-studies as 
*' Claribel '* and " Lilian.*' These are the preliminary 
studies of an artist with a fresh and exquisite feeling 
for beauty of form. Avho is bent on mastering the 
technique of his craft. Difilering widely from Pope 
in his poetic manner, he has an equally scrupulous 
desire for technical excellence. He has something of 
Keats* sensuous delight in color and melody, some- 
thing of his magical excellence of piirase. yet even 
in this early effort we detect a characteristic note of 
divei'gerice fr^^m those poets who, like Kt-ats, loved 
*• beauty only.'* He shows us his ideal poet t 
- dower-rd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
the love of love,'* whose melodies fling all abroad 

*Many of them '-^-:C-,:ue Tennyson's lifelong fri-nds. For 
reminiscence? of tke society r. T\ Mri'r;\yri:im. Ixxxvii. 

+ See '•■ The Poet " and '' The Poet's IMind,'" included origin, 
allv in the edition of 15-30. 



EECENT WEITER8 467 

"the winged shafts" not of beauty but "of truth." 
In a remarkable and important poem, The Palace of 
Art, which appeared in a volume published in 1832, 
Tennyson defines his position on this point witli 
extraordinary vigor and distinctness. Against Keats^ 
reiterated poetic principle, that 

** Beauty is truth ; truth, beauty," * 

Tennyson sets the solemn allegory of the "sinful 
soul," which possessed all good things, merely that 
they might contribute to a mere selfish lust of 
aesthetic enjoyment. Stricken through at last with 
remorse, tlie soul, in the isolation of its gilded tow- 
ers, hears afar off, with perception born of love, the 
call of humanity. To the fine aesthetic sensibilities 
of Keats, Tennyson thus added a moral earnestness 
in which, so far as appears, Keats was deficient. He 
remained unfaltering in his allegiance to the loftiest 
conception of the poet's mission. It is his distinc- 
tion to have successfully combined the conscience of 
the man with the conscience of the artist, and to the 
last to have "followed the gleam." f 

Tennyson lost his father in 1830, and in that year 
left Cambridge without taking a degree. In 1833 
came the shock of a profounder sorrow in tlie loss of 
his more than brother, Arthur Hallam,J who died 
suddenly at Vienna. In Memoriam^ that incompa- 

* Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. 

t See ** Merlin and the Gleam,'* in Demeter, and Other 
Poems, 

X ** More than my brothers are to me." — Xn Memoriam, ix., 
Ixzix. 



468 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

rable poem in which Tennyson long after gave to 
the world the record of this story of friendship and 
loss, admits us into the sacred places of this great 
grief. Tennesson's shy and morbidly reticent nature 
made him shrink from contact with the world at 
large, and he was all the more dependent for love 
and sympathy on the friendship of the tried and 
chosen few. Among them Hallam had held the first 
place, and his loss not only seemed to tear away part 
of Tennyson's life, but, if we may judge from In 
Memoriam, it set the poet face to face with the ever- 
lasting and primal questions of existence. The 
secret vicissitudes of the soul within us, the hidden 
convulsions which shake the balance of life, the pain- 
ful readjustment to changed conditions, these things 
that constitute the essence of a true biography, are 
but a matter of surmise to those without. After 
Hallam's death Tennyson settled in London, living 
much to himself, writing constantly, but publishing 
almost nothing. He belonged to a select coterie, the 
*' Sterling Club," where he met Carlyle, Thackeray, 
Landor, and other famous men. It was a time of 
preparation and growth, under the teaching of death 
and sorrow. Nearly ten years of silence were at last 
broken by the publication, in 1842, of two volumes 
of poems. The book included all of the earlier 
poems of which the author's maturer taste approved, 
revised with the Tennysonian fastidiousness, and 
about as much new matter. The new poems, among 
which were the " Morte d' Arthur," " Ulysses," " The 
Two Voices," and " Locksley Hall," showed a broad- 
gjjing and deepening power, and the volumes won 



RECENT WKITEKS 469 

Tennyson an enthusiastic recognition from both critics 
and readers. A year later the veteran Wordsworth 
pronounced him " decidedly the greatest of our living 
poets," * and from tins time he took that leading 
place in the literature of his day which his astonish- 
ing vitality and productiveness so long maintained. 
The collected poems of 1842 showed plainly that dis- 
tinguishing trait of Tennyson, his extraordinary mas- 
tery in widely different fields. His genius is eclectic. 
The classic world, as in "Ulysses" or "Lucretius"; 
the mediaeval, as in"Stylites" or "Galahad"; the 
modern, as in " The Gardener's Daughter " or Maud, 
all are at his command. He is the consummate 
artist, as versatile in manner as he is varied in sub- 
ject. He can pass at will from the noble epic roll of 
the Idylls to the rough dialect of the " Northern Far- 
mer"; from the pseudo-Wordsworthian simplicity 
of " Dora " to the somewhat Corinthian ornateness of 
Enoch Arde7i. In " The Voyage of Maeldune " he 
touches RossettI and the Pre-Raphaelites, while in 
such stirring battle lyrics as " The Revenge " and the 
" Light Brigade " he invades the province of Drayton 
and of Campbell. Yet in all there is an indefinable 
flavor of individuality, the rough edges and sharp 
angles of fact are softened, and life is seen through 
a golden haze of meditative beauty. In the smooth 
flow of the verse, in its very turns and pauses, we 
recognize the trick of the Tennysonian manner. 
^'Lockslej^ Hall " is one of the poems which show the 
nearness of the poet to his time. It breathes the 
intensity, the exaggeration, the quick despair, the 

♦Letter to Professor Henry Ree<J. 



470 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUBE 

vast and unconquerable hopes of youth, and it 
sounded as a trumpet call to the young men of that 
generation. AVe are swept on in its buoyant move- 
ment by the prophetic enthusiasm of the new science 
which was transforming the world. Tlie strain of 
personal complaining is overpowered by the deep 
pulsations of the ^' wondrous mother age." In its 
vision of the world that shall be, the very heavens 
are filled with the argosies of commerce. Then 
there comes that chant of a progressive humanity 
which is one of the recurrent motifs in modern liter- 
ature. As Burns had discerned a time of universal 
brotherhood '' comin' yet for a' that,'' so Tennyson 
sees afar off the era of a universal peace, the day of 
the parliament of man, when the whole world shall 
be one group of confederated states, when 

" The common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, 

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.'* 

From 1842 until the time of his death, Tennyson 
lived a life of seclusion and steady industry : a life 
marked by few striking outward happenings, and 
chiefly remarkable for that progress of the soul 
within of which the succession of his books is the 
lasting memorial. The year 1850 stands out from 
the rest as the year of his marriage to Miss Emily 
Sell wood, of the publication of In 2Iemoriam^ 
and of his appointment to the Laureateship. Three 
years later be settled at Farringford, in the Isle of 
Wight. With Farringford and with a place at 
Blackdown in Sussex, which he bouglit in 1867 to 
avoid the curiosity of American tourists^ his later life 



RECENT WRITERS 471 

is chiefly associated. He bent all the fullness of his 
powers to win success in two great fields of poetry 
which in his earlier years he had left unattempted — 
the Epic and the Drama. Four of the Idylls of the 
King appeared in 1859, and others were gradually 
added until the work grew to the symmetry of its 
full proportions. In 1875 he published Queen Mary^ 
the first of his series of dramas. That a poet of 
sixty-six, with a lifetime of successes behind him in 
widely different lines, should leave them to struggle 
with the difficulties of a new and highly technical 
form of composition, and that he should persevere in 
this in spite of repeated discouragements, is worthy 
of especial notice. The purely spiritual side of 
Tennyson's genius, present almost from the first, 
grew with his growth. The merely sensuous delight 
in the tangible revelation of beauty, the luxurj^ of 
eye and ear, yielded to a deeper perception of an 
underlying world of spirit, of which this world of 
sight and touch seemed but the shadow. The second 
"Locksley Hall" is full of a sense of the limitations 
of the new science, as the first is the paean of its seem^ 
ingly boundless possibilities. In " Despair " the issue 
raised by the scientific thought of the day is faced 
with a merciless and unflinching power. If the world 
is Godless and man but a better brute, our life is a 
cheat and a curse, and endurance of it intolerable 
and purposeless. Face this and end it. Here the 
extreme but logical conclusion of those who see 
nothing in the universe but matter and law, is 
thrust home on us in poetry of passion and of terror. 
Meanwhile, in such poems as " De Profundis '' and 



472 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

" The Ancient Sage," we see Tennyson's own con* 
viction deepen that God and spirit are the eter- 
nal realities of the world. Poem after poem in 
JDemeter^ a book published just before the poet's 
death, turns on the mysterious relation of soul and 
body. It is the book of old age, written in the 
shadow of that night when no man can work. The 
servant body is falling into ruin, but everywhere the 
triumph of the undying spirit over the failing flesh 
is triumphantly proclaimed. The body is "foul at 
best "; it is but "the house of a brute let to the soul 
of a man," and its office done, the man " stands on 
the heights of his life, with a glimpse of a height 
that is higher." * Wlien he wrote Demeter^ Ten- 
nyson had passed the allotted threescore years and 
ten. He was awaiting with a beautiful tranquillity 
and confidence the time when the door of this 
"goodly prison" should be opened. Death came to 
him gently, as the gracious and fitting close to a lofty 
life. The white mist hung low over the earth, but 
the room in which the poet lay was glorious in moon- 
light. Illuminated in its white radiance, a volume of 
Shakespeare in his hand, his finger still marking the 
dirge in Cymbeline which he had lately read, the 
Laureate passed peacefully out of this "bourne of 
time and space "f as one prepared to depart. 

Theodore Watts has told us that there are poets of 
energy and poets of art \ — poets, that is, whose pre- 

* *' By an Evolutionist/' in Demeter, and other Poems, 
\ "■ Crossing the Bar." Ibid, 

J See the admirable and suggestive essay on '* Poetry "io 
the lEncyclopcBdia Britannica, ninth edition. 



RECENT WRITERS 473 

dominant quality is original power, eruptive and 

irresistible as the volcanic discharge of 
Tennyson's ^ 

work. molten lava, and poets whose well 

ordered and less impulsive work bears the high finish 
of a refined and scrupulous art. In our day, Brown- 
ing admirably represents the poet of energy, while 
Tennyson stands no less emphatically as the poet of 
art. As a craftsman Tennyson has few superiors in our 
literature; he approaches Milton in the perfection and 
excels him in the variety of his poetic workmanship. 
The Tennysonian style at its best has "an extreme 
subtlety and curious elaborateness of expression";* 
it has that intricacy of structure which points to 
extreme care and slov/ness in composition. While at 
times it can be terse and strong, or obtrusively simple 
and unadorned, its characteristic excellence is not 
compression or directness. Tennyson's gift is neither 
tlie sublime reticence and conciseness of Dante, nor 
the limpid and indescribably moving simplicity of 
Wordsworth when he is at his best. Graceful, melo- 
dious, and tender, Tennyson breathes through silver 
rather than blows through bronze. While in Brown- 
ing's masculine and rugged utterance the thinker 
obtrudes himself, so that inconsiderate readers are 
often led to undervalue the purely poetic excellence, 
in Tennyson, through the very charm and perfection 
of his art, we are rather apt to underestimate the 

* Matthew Arnold, On Translating Hoiner, p. 285 (Mac- 
millan's edition). The student is advised to read carefully the 
analysis of Tennyson's style in this passage. Note particu- 
larly the distinction between the simplicite of Wordsworth apd 
Tennyson's simplesse, p. 389. 



474 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

solid substratum of philosophic thought. We ^\iI^ 
therefore briefly consider Tennyson's poetry from 
this aspect in preference to dwelling on its obvious 
beauties. We will attempt to relate his work to 
those two new elements — the close communion witli 
the life of nature, the broader sympathy with the 
life of man — which we saw take their rise in the first 
quarter of the eighteenth century to become the 
motive force in the literature of modern times. As a 
poet of nature Tennyson is sometimes 
a poet of spoken of as the disciple of Wordsworth, 
nature. ^^^^ j^ fact, while he resembles the older 

poet in minuteness and accuracy of observation, in 
other respects his attitude is fundamentally different. 
As we have said, to Wordsworth an Infinite Power 
was perpetually revealing itself, not merely through 
but in nature. He believed that nature possessed a 
conscious life, and that 

** Every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes." * 

Tennyson, on the other hand, especially in his 
earlier work, is ii ipressed with the order underlying 
the processes of nature, with the ''law which cannot 
be b'oken," and is not insensible, as was Words- 
worth, to the aloofness and even apparent mtagonism 
of natnre to man. In a word, Wordsworth's view of 
nature is essentially mystical, and Tennyson's inher- 
ently scientific, I'o Wordsworth, moreover, as in 
"Ihe Primrose and the Rock," nature seems the 
unbroken revelation of divine love, while Tennyson, 
like Lucretius, Byron, and Leopardi, is not insensible 



RECENT WRITERS 475 

to the mystery of her seeming cruelty and indiffer- 
ence. To the misanthropic hero of Maud^ 

** Nature is one with rapine, a barm no preacher can heal ; 
The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow 
speared by the shrike/' * 

the " whole little world " is '^ a world of plunder and 
prey." The conviction of Lucretius that man is but 
the puppet of mighty and impersonal agencies, pro- 
duced and destroyed with equal indifference by the 
mechanical operation of purposeless laws of life, is 
recognized and combated in In Memoriam and 
"Despair." Tennyson quiets this paralyzing fear by 
his unshakable trust in the faith and lofty intuitions of 
man's soul, and by his assurance that the workings of 
nature show an eternal purpose of progress, rather 
than the operation of blind and meaningless forces^ 
He finds God 

*' Not in world or sun, 
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye," f 

nor in " the freezing reason," but in man's capacity 
to feel. He opposes to nature's apparent indifference 
and cruelty the doctrine of evolution. This doctrine, 
the greatest contribution to thought of contemporary 
science, finds in Tennyson its poetic exponent ; it is 
the very foundation stone of his philosophy. 

In his feeling for nature Tennyson is thus as truly 
the poet of modern science as Wordsworth and Cole- 
ridge were of the German philosophy of their day, 
but be accepts the dogmas of science only to interpret 
them according to his own poetic and spiritual insight. 
♦ Maud, iv. stanza 4. \Iti Memoriam, cxxiT. 



476 INTKODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Tennyson is no less distinctively the scientist in 

his views of human progress ; he recognizes a gradual 

and orderly development as the law alike 

^^^J^^f^^ ^^ of human society and of the material 
poet of man, '^ 

world. Byron's rebellious and ill-regu- 
lated clamor for liberty, Shelley's noble " passion for 
reforming the world " by some sweeping and unac- 
countable conversion of humanity, is succeeded by 
Tennyson's belief in that '^moving upward" through 
the innumerable centuries whereby the beast in man 
is brought at length under the mastery of the spirit. 
In their youth Byron and Shelley saw liberty stricken 
doAvn and bleeding through the reactionary power of 
conservatism ; Tennyson, as a young man, witnessed 
the passage of the first Reform Bill (1832) and other 
hardly less important measures, by the strength of 
the reviving democracy ; he beheld the peaceful 
advance of liberty by the modification and through 
the agency of existing institutions. This gradual, 
legal and definite progress he has from first to last 
consistently represented. At the outset of his career 
he rejoices to see freedom 

** Slowly broaden down 
From precedent to precedent." * 

At its close he pictures her as one who 

** like nature, would'st not mar 
By changes all too fierce and fast : 
This order of her human star, 
This heritage of the past.'' f 

*'* You ask me why, tho' ill at ease.* 
f See also ** Politics " in Bemeter^ 



RECENT WRITERS 477 

Tennyson often touches on the social questions of 
his time: in The Princess on the rights of women ; 
in a large group of poems, in which Maud, Aylmer^s 
Field, and *'Locksley Hall " are included, on social 
distinctions as a bar to marriage. But the noblest 
and most important exposition of his views of human 
progress is found in Idylls of the King. 

The Idylls of the King has been called a quasi- 
epic. Departing from the conventional epic form by 

its lack of a closely continuous nar- 

^ ^' -^1 ^ ^^ ^^ x^^ A The** Idylls of 

rative, it has yet that loity manner and theKinff." 

underlying unity of design which leads 

us to class it with the epics at least in the essentials. 

It consists of a series of chivalric legends, taken 

chiefly from the Morte d'' Arthur of Sir Thomas 

Malory, grouped so as to exhibit the establishment, 

the greatness, and the downfall of an ideal kingdom 

of righteousness among men. '' The Coming of 

Arthur," the ideal ruler, shows us the setting up of 

this kingdom. Before this was disorder, great tracts 

of wilderness, 

** Wherein the beast was ever more and more, 
But man was less and less." * 

Arthur slays the beast and fells the forest, and the 
old order changes to give place to new. Then the 
song of Arthur's knights rises, a majestic chorus of 
triumph : 

** Clang battle-ax and clash brand. Let the King reign." 

In " Gareth and Lynette " the newly established 
kingdom is seen doing its work among men. Arthur, 

♦"The Coming of Arthur." 



478 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

enthroned in his great hall, dispenses impartial justice. 
The knights 

** Ride abroad redressing human wrongs." 

The allegory shows us, in Gareth's contests with 
the knights " that have no law nor King," the 
contest of the soul with the temptations that at dif- 
ferent periods of life successively attack it : 

" The war of Time against the soul of man."* 

Then follow the Idylls^ which trace the entrance 
and growth of an element of sin and discord, which 
spreading pulls down into ruin that "fellowship of 
noble knights," " which are an image of the mighty 
world." The purity of the ideal kingdom is fouled, 
almost at its source, by the guilty love of Lancelot 
and the Queen. Among some the contagion spreads ; 
while others, in an extremity of protest, start in quest 
of the Holy Grail, leaving the duty at hand for 
mystical visions. Man cannot bring down heaven 
to earth, he cannot sanctify the mass of men by his 
own rapturous anticipations ; he cannot safely neg- 
lect the preliminary stages of progress appointed for 
the race, he " may not wander from the allotted 
field before his work be done." \ 

So by impurity and by impatience the rift in the 
kingdom widens, and in " T])e Last Tournament," in 
the stillness before the impending doom, we hear the 
shrill voice of Dagonet railing at the King, who 
thinks himself as God, that he can make 

*"Gareth and Lynette." Note the significance of the entire 
passage in which this line occurs, 
t •* The Holy Grail." 



RECENT WRITERS 479 

'* Honey from hornet-combs 
And men from beasts/' 

In " Guinevere," unequaled elsewhere in the Idylls 
in pure poetry, the blow falls ; at length, in the con- 
cluding poena, Arthur passes to the isle of Avilion, 
and once more 

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new."* 

Tennyson himself tells us that in this, his longest 
poem, he has meant to shadow '^ sense at war with 
soul," f the struggle in the individual and in the 
race, between tliat body which links us with the brute 
and the soul which makes us part of a spiritual order. 
But the mastery of the higher over the lower is only 
obtained through many seeming failures. Wounded 
and defeated, the King exclaims : 

'* For I, being simple, thought to work His will, 
And have but stricken with the sword in vain ; 
And all whereon I lean'd, in wife and friend, 
Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm 
Reels back into the beast, and is no more." t 

But lie also half perceives the truth which it is the 
poet's purpose to suggest to us. It is short-sighted 
to expect the immediate sanctification of the race ; if 
we are disheartened, striving to "work His will," it is 
because " we see not to the close." It is impossible 
that Arthur's work should end in failure — departing, 
he declares, " I pass, but shall not die," and when his 

*''The Passing of Arthur." 

f ** To the Queen," epilogue to Idylls of the King. 

X *' The Passing of Arthur." 



^80 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

grievous wound is healed, he will return. The Idylls 
of the King is thus tlie epic of evolution in appli- 
cation to the progress of human society. In it the 
teachings of Li Memoriam assume a narrative form. 

*' Move upward, working out the beast/' 

may be taken as a brief statement of its theme ; and 
we read in it the belief in the tendency upward and 
an assurance of ultimate triumph : 

** Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet. 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void 

When God hath made the pile complete." * 

Tennyson, as the representative poet of modern 
England, is the poet of modern science. But he also 
represents that intense spirituality which is con- 
spicuously present in these so-called mercantile and 
material times. With the scientist's deep perception 
of the presence of law^ he himself shared, as did 
Wordsworth, in the visionary rapture of the mystics. 
For him, as for Arthur, the world of spirit veritably 
exists, more substantial than the world of sense, but 
the barrier to our entrance is in our own limited 
powers. When the knights report the result of 
^heir search after the Grail, Arthur declares : 

** Ye have seen what ye have seen "— 
* In Memoriam^ liVo 



RECENT WRITERS 481 

each as much as his spiritual sight permitted him. 
Those with Gareth looking on the towers of Camelot, 
cry out in the disbelief of the materialist : 

*' Lord, there is no such city anywhere 
But all a vision." 

But the warder tells them that the city is spiritual 
and therefore real, seeing it 

•' is built 
To music, therefore never built at all 
And therefore built forever." 

Tennyson unites the modern grasp of physical 
truth with the apprehension of that spiritual element 
which permeates and sustains it, and to him, as his 
ow^ Arthur, the 

** Visions of the night or of the day 
Come as they will."* 

Appreciating, with tlie scientist, the law of the 
world of sense, he yet asks with the idealist : 

"The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the 
plains — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns ? "f 

He yet points us to 

** That true world within the world we see, 
Whereof our world is but the bounding shore." :f 

**'The Holy Grail." See the curious account of Tenny- 
«£>n's trances, or visions, in Waugh's Alfred, Lord Tennyson : 
a Study of His Life and Woi'ks, 

k '• The Higher Pantheism." 

iDe Profundis, ii. 1. Cf., also, " The Ancient Sage." 



482 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATUKE 

While no recent Englisli poet is so versatile and 
so broadly representative as Tennyson, Robert 
Browning (1812-1889) has satisfied, as no other poet 

has done, some of the deepest spiritual 
Browing- "^^^s ^^ his generation. From the first 

his genius has been more bold, irregular, 
and independent than that of Tennyson ; he has 
been less responsive to the changing moods of his 
time. Indeed, he has rather proved its leader, taking 
his own way, unmoved by praise or blame, and at 
last compelling many to follow him. His work is 
highly charged with an abounding vigor and audac- 
ity characteristic of Browning himself. Mrs. Orr 
tells us that ^'his consciousness of health was vivid," 
Bayard Taylor speaks of his " vigor and elasticity," 
his handshake has been compared to an electric 
shock, and Mr. Sharp speaks of his " intensely alive 
hand."- Landor writes of him in lines crowded with 
suggestion : 

'* Since Chaucer was alive and hale 
No man hath walked along our roads with step 
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
So varied in discourse." * 

Such allusions bring Browning before us as the keenly 
observant man of the world, alive to his very finger- 
tips, full of that robust and wholesome capacity for 
enjoyment which we associate with Chaucer, and 
Shakespeare, and Scott, but which among our mod- 
ern men of letters is unfortunately rare. A knowl- 
edge of Browning's genial and aggressively active 

* Sonnet to Browning. 



EECENT WRITERS 483 

personality is of real value to one who would seize 
upon the spirit of his work. It is not an intrusive 
curiosity, but the spirit of the genuine student, 
which leads us to contrast Browning's superb equi- 
poise with the lack of balance shown by so many of 
his contemporaries ; to set his ready fellowship with 
men, his soundness of mind and of body, beside 
Rossetti's morbid life and imperfect human sym- 
pathies, his insomnia, and his disordered nerves. 
Matthew Arnold found a partial relief from the 
"something that infects the world" in the patient 
calm of nature, yet to his melancholy fancy earth 
and sky seemed 

" To bear rather than rejoice." 

But to Browning's inextinguishable hopefulness, 
God's "ancient rapture" in life, and love, and 
beauty, is still visibly renewed in his world.* Like 
the happy child in Pippa Passes^ he sings in our rest- 
less, doubting century, with its tired nerves and 
throbbing temples, the strange song of courage and 

of faith. 

*' The year's at the spring 
And day's at the morn ; 
Morning's at seven ; 
The hill-side's dew-pearled ; 
The lark's on the wing ; 
The snail's on the thorn ; 
God's in His Heaven — 
All's right with the world." 

We are refreshed by a wholesome delight in the 
simple joy of living, that in the thin intellectua] 
* Paracelsus, act Vo 



484 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

atmospliere of our civilization, comes with a delicious 
flavor of the antique world. 

' our manhood's prime vigor ! no spirit feels waste, 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor sinew unbraced. 

How good is man's life the mere living, how fit to employ 
The heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy. " * 

This strain of manly confidence, this overflowing 
force and vitality, is not faltering or exceptional, it is 
part of Browning's masculine and powerful genius, 
and of his wholesome and happy life. Courage and 
cheerfulness are inseparable from his fine physique, 
his massive breadth of character, his wide sympa- 
thies with man and nature, his hearty pleasure in 
physical and intellectual activity. He had a strange 
fellowship with all living things, reaching down to 
the tijiy creatures of the grass ; he loved music 
and painting and sculpture, with a love developed by 
long study and intimate knowledge. The beauty of 
Italy, his chosen land, that he declared was his " uni- 
versity," early entered into his life and art, and 
besides all this he found, what men of genius rarely 
find, a woman of fine nature and answering genius 
capable of responding to his highest moods. 

There are few more beautiful love stories in our 
literature than this. In an exquisite series of Sonnets^ 
probably her most perfect work, Elizabeth Barrett 
has told how Browning crossed the darkened thresh- 
old of her sick room, and how she knew that it was 
not death which held her, but love.f And in One 

* Ba^'d. f Sonnets from the Portuguese^ i 



KECENT WRITERS 485 

Word Ifore, or JSy the Fireside, or in that exalted 
apostrophe in The Riiig and the Booh^ Browning 
pays an answering tribute to his " moon of poets." 
In thinking of Browning's unfaltering cheerfulness, 
we must remember that between his marriage to Miss 
Barrett in 1846 and her death in 1861, lay fifteen 
years, passed in the inspired air of Florence, of com- 
panionship as perfect as it was rare. Browning has 
been one of the most prolific of English poets. His 
work covers more than half a century of almost inces- 
sant production (^Pauline, 1833 — Asolando, 1889), 
exhibiting in sheer bulk and intellectual vigor a 
creative energy hardly surpassed by any poet since 
Shakespeare. Written while England Avas passing 
through a time of spiritual despondency and fluctu- 
ating faith. Browning's poetry impresses us as some 
great cathedral, in which every part is duly subordi- 
nated to one symmetrical design, and consecrated to 
one ultimate purpose. It is independent and often 
eccentric in style ; it is defiant of the prevailing 
theories of art ; it rises solitary, abrupt, rugged, and 
powerful, from an age of fluent, graceful, and melodi- 
ous verse. 

Browning, like Milton and Wordsworth, comes 
before us as a teacher, but our first consideration is 
naturally not the truth or value of his philosoph}^ 
but the poetic quality of his work. It is as a poet 
that he has chosen to appeal to us, and it is primarily 
as poet and not as philosopher that his work must 
take its place in literature. The salt of poetry may 

^See passage beginning ** O lyric love/' in The Ring and 
the Book, at the close of bk. i. 



486 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

preserve a poem the pliilosophy of which is trite or 
fallacious, but it may be questioned whether any 
philosophy, however noble or invigorating, will secure 
it a permanent place in literature if it lack the poetic 
quality. Looked at simply from the art side, few 
dispassionate readers will deny that Browning's 
poetry has serious defects. In many instances, more 
especially in the longer poems, the fine gold is 
debased by an alloy of versified prose ; and long 
philosophic arguments, ingenious, subtle, and some- 
times wearisome, are thrust forward untransmuted by 
the poet's alchemy. It is probable that some such 
poems, for instance the Red Cotton Nightcap Country 
(1873), while they may continue to hold a formal 
place in the literature, will cease to be read except 
by the curious or conscientious student. If Brown- 
ing's verse is musical, its music is certainly different 
from that with which the masters have made us 
familiar. Habitually spirited, it is often jolting and 
abrupt ; full of parentheses and ejaculations, and 
moving by sudden starts and jerks. To the casual 
reader Browning often seems impatient of form in 
his anxiety to get the thing said ; thoughts and feel- 
ings seem crowding and jostling together for utter- 
ance, and he seems only anxious to '' hitch the thing 
into verse," that he may turn to something new. 
His rhymes are apt to be fantastic and ludicrously 
ingenious to an extent unprecedented in serious 
poetry. The extravagances of Hudibras^ of Beppo, 
and of the Fable for Critics in this direction, are 
fairly outdone by Browning in the Cld Pictures in 
Florence^ or in Pacchiarotto The last-named poem 



RECENT WRITERS 487 

in particular is an unparalleled exhibition of rhythmi- 
cal gymnastics. English is racked and wrenched to 
the uttermost, and when it fails a Greek or Latin 
word is unceremoniously caught up and thrust in to 
take its place. It must further be admitted that 
Browning is at times obscure to a degree whicli even 
the difficulty of his subject does not justify ; but 
this defect has been dwelt on to weariness, and 
usually with an unfortunate exaggeration. Indeed a 
very large proportion of Browning's poetry presents 
no serious difficulty to an ordinarily attentive and 
unprejudiced reader ; the complaint of obscurity 
comes most loudly from those whose knowledge of 
his work is slight, or from those who are so out of 
sympathy with his spirit that they 

** endure 
No light, being themselves obscure." 

Such obvious features of Browning's art have exposed 
it to an unfavorable criticism in which there is un- 
doubtedly a proportion of trutli. On the other hand 
many unacquainted with Browniing's theory of art 
have been confident tliat he liad missed his mark 
when he had onlj^ failed to hit their mark, at which, 
in fact, he had never aimed. In an age when finish, 
smoothness, and melody are made the primary requi* 
sites in poetry, our taste is naturally repelled by work 
distinguished by excellence of a very different order. 
We must remember that taste in sucli matters is 
largely influenced by custom, and that the generation 
trained to delight in the heroic couplet found even 
the blank verse of Milton intolerably harsh. In a 



488 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

word, Browning's artistic merits are those which, as 
they are novel, we have not been trained to appre- 
ciate ; his defects are too often those to which train- 
ing has made us the most sensitive. To enjoy 
Tennyson's work but little preparation was needed ; 
the traditions of poetry were with him, and he com- 
pleted or enlarged what others had begun. But 
Browning has sought to conquer new regions for his 
art ; like Wordsworth he has come distinctly as an 
innovator, and as such is within Wordsworth's rule 
that every great and original poet must first create 
the taste by which he is to be enjoyed. 

It is doubtful whether Browning's purely poetic 
merit is even j^et fully appreciated. He has a 
marvelous accuracy of observation, painting the 
revealing details of a situation with a phenomenal 
truth and vividness. In much descriptive poetry 
beauty is gained at the expense of truth and reality ; 
in Browning beauty is habitually subordinated to 
truth and power. 

** A tap at the pane, the quick, sharp scratch 
And blue spirt of a lighted match, 
And a voice less loud thro' its joys and fears 
Than the two hearts beating each to each." * 

These lines may not impress us as beautiful, but 
we must recognize in them a precision in the use of 
words, a felicitous correspondence of sound and 
sense, which marks the master of style. Again, the 
description in Christmas Eve of the congregation in 
the Methodist chapel is no more beautiful than an 

*** Meeting at Night/' 



KECENT WRITERS 489 

interior by Teniers, but it has the same inimitable 
minuteness and fidelity. In the same way Brown- 
ing's metai^hors, while unusually original and ex- 
pressive, are often exact and striking rather than 
beautiful, being employed as an actual help to our 
understanding.* Many of Browning's longer poems, 
through the very wealth of his resources and through 
his erratic agility of mind, lack unity and directness ; 
he is perpetually turned aside by the chance encoun- 
ter wath some tempting idea, so that we often leave 
the direct course for a kind of zigzag progress. On 
the other hand, he has given us poems, such, for 
instance, as ^^ Martin Relph" and "Ivan Ivanovitch," 
which are masterpieces of strong and graphic narra- 
tive. In one province of poetry he is supreme — the 
dramatic monologue, f As triumphs of the poet's art 
such marvelous productions as " My Last Duchess," 
" Andrea del Sarto," or '*' Fra Lippo Lippi " stand 
alone. It is as idle to say that such poems have not 
the sweetness or melody of Tennyson as it would be to 
complain that the " Lotus-Eaters " lacks Browning's 
invigorating power. On such a principle we might 
condemn Milton because he could not create a Fal- 
staff, or Shakespeare because he produced nothing 
similar to Paradise Lost. But above all we must 

* See in illustration of this the metaphors in The Ring and the 
Book; see, also, conclusion to ** Shah Abbas" in Ferishta's 
Fancies, where the difficulty of crossing a room in the dark 
without stumbling is likened to that in entering the heart of 
another without the lamp of love as a guide. 

f A monologue or soliloquy, dramatic through the presence 
of some other person than the speaker, a presence inferred 
only from the words of the speaker himself. 



490 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

remember that Browning's poems are written in 
accordance with what he regarded as the true func- 
tion of art. In his view the highest office of the 
poet, as of other artists, was to arouse, to sting into 
consciousness, the diviner side of man's nature. He 
teaches in " Andrea del Sarto " that something more 
than mere technical excellence is required for the 
production of the highest art ; that it is better for 
the medium of expression to give way under the 
strain of thought and passion than for it to be coldly 
perfect because the soul is wanting.* The organist 
in " Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha " turns dissatisfied 
from the intricate, technical excellence of a fugue, to 
Palestrina, the composer who emancipated music from 
pedantic trammels and breathed into it a new souL 
In " Old Pictures in Florence " we are taught that 
it is the mission of art to tantalize by its very incom- 
pleteness, rather than to satisfy by its perfection and 
repose ; that the aim of the true artist is to arouse a 
longing for an unseen and eternal perfection, which 
no earthly similitude can ever fully reveal. Without 
this moral, or spiritual, element and purpose, art sinks 
into a mere sensuous satisfaction in color and form^ 
such as that shown by the corrupt bishop who 
ordered his tomb at St. Praxed's. In the bishop's 
dying directions for the adornment of his tomb we 
see how a refined delight in the mere externals of 
beauty and culture may go hand in hand with the 
moral depravity of a " low-thoughted " spirit. One 
may prefer Tully's picked Latin to Ulpian, glory in 
the colors of marble and jasper, and design a frieze 
*0f. Ruskin's Theor]/ of Art, pp. 350-351. supra. 



RECENT WEITERS 491 

in which pagan nymphs dance through the most 
sacred scenes of Christian story, one may do all 
this and only demonstrate the radical insufficiency of 
the purely aesthetic view of art.* 

Browning, then, does not set himself to manu- 
facture " poetic confectionery "; strength and suggest- 
iveness, ratlier than beauty, are his primary objects, 
and consequently his poetry is not cloying or relaxing, 
but bracing, instinct to an extraordinary degree witli 
moral invigoration. It is not intended to be taken as 
a mild form of opiate, but to '^ sting," as Browning 
himself tells us, '^ like nettle-broth." f Looking, there- 
fore, at his poetry apart from its moral or philosophic 
value, it appears that Browning's positive merits as 
an artist have been often undervalued because of the 
novelty of bis methods and aims ; because his peculiar 
excellences are distinctly different from those with 
which the tone of recent poetry has made us familiar. 

Browning's optimism, of which we have already 
spoken, is not thoughtless but well grounded. Like 
Shakespeare, he does not seek to evade 
^he melancholy and perplexing aspects fterchT/^^ 
of life, but confronts and conquers the 
specters of the mind. Like his own " Cleon," his 
sense of the inadequacy of life is keen, Avhile he sees 
a " world of capability for joy spread round us," 
"tempting life to take." J Even his buoyant and 

*** The Bishop orders his tomb at St. Praxcd's." 
t See Epilogue in Pacchiarotto, an important poem as a state- 
ment of Browning's view of his own work. Note especially 
last stanza. 
t** Cleon." 



492 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

healthy nature is stirred to the depths by the bitter 
compulsion of his time^ We have compared him to 
Chaucer, but he is Chaucer surrounded by the subtle- 
ties and searchings of nineteenth century thought ; a 
profound and original genius, facing in deadly earnest 
men's "obstinate questionings" of life and of death. 
To Browning the only explanation of the mystery 
and the misery of this present life is to be found in 
its relation to a life to come. His view of life, like 
that of Carlyle, of Wordsworth, and of Tennyson, 
is essentially spiritual. To him God, the soul, and 
personal immortality are the fundamental and all- 
important facts,* Wordsworth found an intimation 
of immortality in certain ideas or sympathies innate 
in the soul ; Browning found a similar intimation in 
the soul's inextinguishable longings and aspirations, 
irhich earth cannot satisfy and which witness to 
another life as the only adequate sphere of our ac- 
tivity. In a famous prose passage Browning has 
declared that nothing but the soul " is worth study." 
To him it is worth study because it only of things 
earthy will survive the temporal, because it sustains 
a definite relation to the eternal sphere of things. 
The development of the soul in this relation to the 
unseen is consequently the chief subject of Brown- 
ing's work, as it is — in his judgment — the supreme 
interest of life. Familiar as this tliought may seem 
to us, by making it the essence of his delineation 
of life, Browning has virtually created poetry of a 
wholly new order. Shakespeare is the unapproached 

* See'* La Saisaiz" — passage beginning, *' You have que* 
tioned, I have answered/' etc. 



RECENT WRITERS 493 

interpreter of the life of man on earth, but in his 
dramas life is revealed in no vital or necessary rela- 
tion to a hereafter ; encompassed by darkness, it 
rather seems to us to be "rounded by a sleep." 
Milton, projecting himself in imagination into a world 
where Shakespeare did not enter, has, on the contrary, 
no real hold on the common or daily life of man.* 
Browning's purpose to show us the seen in the light 
of the unseen is, almost as truly as Milton's, a thing 
'' unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." Shakespeare 
wrote in and for a bustling world, and his characters 
are shown to us in action. Browning wrote when life 
was outwardly more tame and conventional, and in- 
wardly more complex ; when the chief interest of man 
was not action but thought. Accordingly, as we might 
expect, Browning's dramatic power is of another 
order from that of the Elizabethans ; he has a fine 
feeling for the striking elements of a situation^ 
but his characters reveal themselves less through 
action than through thought. He is at his best 
when, in some moment of spiritual crisis, he makes 
a soul describe its inmost nature ; he admits us to the 
inward struggle, intellectual or moral, often leaving 
us to infer its declaration in outward act. These 
words of George Eliot, who often worked like 
Browning in this hidden region of thought, help 
us ta realize the peculiar difficulty of the task : 
"For Macbeth 's rhetoric about the impossibility of 
being many opposite things in the same moment 
referred to tlie clumsy necessities of action, and not to 

' * See Gomparisan of Milton and Shakespeare, pp. 185-186, 



494 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the subtle possibilities of feeling. We cannot speak 
a loyal word and be meanly silent, we cannot kill 
and not kill in the same moment ; but a moment is 
room wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, for 
the outlash of a murderous thought and the sharp 
backward stroke of repentance." * 

An appreciation of Browning's skill as an inter- 
preter of such dubious or complex moods must be 
gained by repeated study of his dramatic monologues. 
We can here only attempt to indicate some of the 
main points in his teaching. 

As life liere is to be looked at as a preparation for 
life hereafter, and this world as the divinely appointed 
forcing house of the soul, experiences are important 
chiefly as they forward or retard the soul's growth. 
Joy is one element in the soul's development, for 
Browning's whole view of life is essentially the 
reverse* of ascetic; yet the more fully we develop 
all our faculties, the more inherently inadequate life 
becomes. It is through this very inadequacy that 
the soul is taught to set its affections elsewhere. In 
Browning emotion is one great agency in breaking 
up our narrow and complacent contentment. He 
teaches us to prize moments of intense feeling and 
aspiration— moments like that in which " Abt Vogler " 
was enabled through music to transcend our tem- 
poral limitations — as times of escape when the soul 
learns to breathe in a purer air. It is the mission of 
the artist, the supreme expressor and interpreter of 
emotion, to awaken such aspiration, and hence the 
necessity — according to Browning's view — -of soul, 
* Daniel Deronda, vol. i. chap. iv. 



RECKNT WR1TEB8 495 

and stimulus to soul, in the truest art. So, earthly- 
love may prove, as in " By the Fireside," a high emo- 
tion wliich shall forward the soul's progress ; and so, 
too, as in " Youth and Art," the sacrifice of it to sor- 
did ambition may stunt the spiritual progress of two 
lives. Browning is thus not only original and darino- 
in method, but in aim ; and whatever we may think 
of the poetic quality of his work, his view of life is 
the most spiritual and stimulating of any Enorlish 
poet, not excepting Milton. 

The great mass of Browning's work makes any 
more specific criticism of it impossible here. It is 
doubtful whether in any one of Brown- 
ing's dramas he really meets the require- ^^^^y^^^S ^ 
ments of the stage ; yet, while he is not 
a dramatist, a large proportion of his poems, mono- 
logues, idyls, or lyrics, are as distinctly dramatic in 
spirit as in form. As closet dramas his plays have 
conspicuous merit, but as a rule his best work is 
found in his shorter poems. Men and Women (1855) 
contains many of the best of these, but characteristic 
masterpieces are scattered through his books, down 
to " Rephan " in Asolando (1889). The Ring and the 
Sooh (1868), a huge psychological epic of more than 
twenty-one thousand lines, remains, after all deduc- 
tions, one of the most considerable and surprising 
poetic achievements of the century. We have 
spoken of this poem as an epic, but only for lack of 
an exacter word ; in reality it is rather a series of 
dramatic monologues in which the same story is 
retold by different speakers ; it is epic only by its 
length and by the underlying unity of its design. 



496 INTRODUCTTON TO ENGLISH LITER ATUBE 

Browning's most ambitious, if not his greatest work^ 
is thus a modification of his chosen poetic form. 

With an iutellectual force comparable to Drydeu's, 
a moral ardor equal to that of Milton, Browning, too, 
is poet as well as thinker and teacher. He is no 
mere reasoner in verse, but the most profoundly pas- 
sionate singer of his time. Through all his work 
there shines the noble spirituality, the marvelous 
subtlety, the strenuous earnestness of a great nature. 
Back of all stands the man, Robert Browning, who 
sings of himself in words which are at once an epi- 
taph and a closing song of triumph, as 

** One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 
Xever doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, tho' right vrere worsted, wrong would tri • 

umph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to 
wake." * 

Thus in this great English poet of our own day we 
find that deep religious earnestness, that astounding 
force, which we noted in those obscure English tribes 
who nearly fifteen centuries ago began to possess 
themselves of the island of Britain. It is, indeed, 
this sound and vigorous character of the English 
race, underlying all the long centuries of its literary 
history, which gives a profound unity to all it has 
created. Browning's " Prospice/' that dauntless chal- 
lenge to death from one who '' was ever a fighter," 
repeats, in its cadence and spirit, poetry that comes to 
us from the dimly seen and far-off childhood of our 

* Epilogue in Asoldndo, Browning's last poem. 



RECENT WRITERS 497 

race. If in the nineteenth century we have bartered 
and sold, and offered sacrifice to the Britannia of the 
market-place, it is still true that the great problems 
of existence have never been dwelt on with more 
earnestness, that the greatest voices of the literature 
have called us with a new ardor to the eternal and the 
unseen. 

Henry Morley reminds us that the opening lines of 
Caedmon's Creation^ the first words of English litera- 
ture on English soil, are words of praise to the 
Almighty Maker of all things. After reviewing in 
outline the long and splendid history of the literature 
thus solemnly begun, we find in the two greatest 
poet voices of our own day, Alfred Tennyson and 
Robert Browning, the note of an invincible faith, an 
undiminished hope ; we find them aflSrming, in the 
historic spirit of the English race, 

** Thy soul and God stand sure." 

STUDY LISTS AND EEFEEENCES 
I. STUDY OF SEPARATE AUTHORS 

Macaulay. (a) The essays on " Clive," ''Warren Hast- 
ings," ''Chatham," "Johnson," "Goldsmith," and "Addi- 
son " may be mentioned as among the many with which 
the student should be familiar. The Historical Essays oj 
Macaulay y and The Select Essays of Macaulay , both edited with 
notes by Samuel Thurber, are strongly recommended for 
school use. A number of the essays can be obtained separately 
in Harpers' Half Hour Series. For study of Macaulay's 
poetry, Rolfe's edition of the Lays of Ancient Rome, with notes 
and introduction, will be found convenient. 

{b) Biography and Criticism. Trevelyan's Life of, 2 vela.; 



498 INTRODtJCTlON TO ENGLlSfl LiTfillATtfllE 

Minto's Manual of English Prose ; Matthe"^ Arnold's Mixed 
Essays, p. 179 ; Life of by J. Cotter Morrison, English Men 
of Letters Series ; Literary Studies (Macatilay), by Walter 
Bagehot. 

Carlyle. {a) The length of many of Carlyle's best books, 
and in some cases their difficulty, make him comparatively 
unavailable for study in an ordinary course. The follow- 
ing selections have been chosen from his shorter and more 
available works — Essays : *' Burns," ** Johnson," " Richter " ; 
Inaugural address at Edinburgh, On the Choice of Books. The 
following works may be read entire or in part ; Heroes and 
Hero Worship y Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, 

(b) Biography and Criticism. Bayne's Lessons from my 
Masters ; A. H. Japp's Three Great Teachers of Our Own Time ; 
Masson's Carlyle, Personally and in his Writings; Garnett's 
Life of in Great Writers Series, and Nichors Life of, in English 
Men of Letters Series ; Some Personal Beminiscences of 
by A. J. Symington ; Minto's Manual of English Prose, for 
study of Carlyle's style ; J. R. Lowell's My Study Windows 
(Carlyle) ; R. H. Hutton, Modern Guides of English Thought 
in Matters of Faith (Thomas Carlyle). For more extended 
study of his life, v, the Carlyle and Emerson Correspondence, 
Letters, and the Reminiscences, all edited by Charles Eliot 
Norton, and Fronde's Life (4 vols, in all). 

Huskin. {a) An Introduction to the Writings of John 
Ruskin, by Yida D. Scudder. This is that very rare thing, a 
good book of selections. It contains introduction, biographi- 
cal sketch, notes, etc., and is admirably adapted for class use 
when works can only be studied through extracts. Sesame 
and Lilies (fine in places, but full of exaggerations, false 
criticism, and inconsistency) ; The Crown of Wild Olive ; 
Lectures on Work, Traffic, and War ; Tinne and Tide ; Letters 
on the Laws of Work ; Fors Clavigera, Letters v. and viii. ; 
Modern Painters, part iii. sect. 1, chap. xv. ; *' The Theoretic 
Faculty, Ibid., sect. 2; **The Imaginative Faculty," chaps. 
i.-v. 

{h) BioaRAPHY AND Criticism, The Life and Work of 



RECENT WRITERS 499 

John Buskin, by W. G. Collingwood, 2 vols. ; John Ruskin: 
Ms Life and Teachings, by J. Marshall Mather ; Records of 
Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning, by Anna Thackeray Ritchie ; 
Preterita: Scenes of My Past Life, by John Ruskin. A. H. 
Japp's Three Great Teachers (Ruskin) ; Bayne's Lessons from 
my Masters (Ruskin) ; The Work of John Ruskin : its Influence 
upon Modern Thought and Life, by Charles Waldstein. 

Matthew Arnold . {a) Study of "Wob.^^— Poetry, * * Swit- 
zerland — 4. Isolation, 5. To Marguerite, 6. Absence ;" 
** Dover Beach/' "The Scholar-gipsy/' " Thyrsis/' "Stanzas 
from the Grande Chartreuse," *' Tristram and Iseult," *' Sohrab 
and Rustum," *' The Forsaken Merman/' Sonnets — ** Shake- 
speare," ** Worldly Place," ''The Good Shepherd with the 
Kid." 

Prose, ** The Function of Criticism," in Essays in Criticism, 
First Series ; '' The Study of Poetry," and '' Milton," inLbid., 
Second Series ; ''Celtic Literature." Extracts from Arnold's 
prose, with admirable introduction, are given in Edward T. 
McLaughlin's Literary Criticism. 

(b) Biography and Criticism. A brief sketch of life will 
be found in Men of the Time ; ^. also for biography A. Lang's 
article on " Matthew Arnold," in Century Magazine, 1881-1882, 
p. 849. " The Poetry of Matthew Arnold," in Essays TJieo- 
logical and Literary, vol. ii., by R. H. Hutton, and "Matthew 
Arnold," by the same author in his Modern Guides of English 
Thought in Matters of Faith, " Culture," a "Dialogue," in 
The Choice of Books and other Essays, by Frederic Harrison 
(a reply to Arnold's Culture and Anarchy ; v. also on same sub- 
ject Shairp's Religion and Culture) ; Stedman's Victorian Poets 
(Arnold) ; " Matthew Arnold ; New Poems," in Essays and 
Studies, by A. C. Swinburne ; Forman's Our Living Poett 
(Arnold) ; Sharp's Victorian Poets (Arnold). 

George Eliot, {a) Silas Marner. Poems, " Brother and 
Sister." (The above are suggested as appropriate for use of 
class. To select special novels for reconanendation is obviously 
useless and inappropriate). 



500 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

(b) Biography and Criticism. Life of, by John "Waltei 
Cross, largely compiled from George Eliot's letters, journals, 
etc., is the standard biography. For shorter lives, v. Life, by 
Oscar Browning, in the Great Writers Series, and that by 
Mathilde Blind, in the Famous Women Series. S. Parkin- 
son's Scenes from tlie George Eliot Country, partly biographical, 
gives interesting description of her early surroundings, and 
traces their influence on her work ; R. H. Hutton's Modern 
Guides of E ngllsh Thought in Matters of Faith (George Eliot 
as an Author), also Hutton's Essays in Literary Criticism 
(George Eliot). Dowden's Studies in Literature ('* George 
Eliot," and " Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda"); Lanier's 
The English Novel (passages on George Eliot). The Ethics oj 
George Eliot, by John Crombie Brown, is a most interesting 
and important contribution to the subject, «. also George 
Eliot's Two Marriages, by Bev. Charles G. Ames. 

Alfred Tennyson. (A) Study of Works.— 1. Poems 
illustrative of Tennyson's life or art, (a) * * Claribel," * ' Nothing 
will die," " Lilian," two songs on '*The Owl," ** Madeline," 
etc. Compare these with Tennyson's later manner. Consider 
importance attached by him to technique. Look up state of 
English poetry in 1830. Tennyson's influence on form. ( V. 
Stedman's Victorian Poets.) Compare early metrical experi- 
ments of Milton, etc. 

(b) Natural descriptions in Tennyson, Poems suggestive 
of particular localities. ** Mariana," '*The Dying Swan," 
** The Brook," " The Miller's Daughter," and natural descrip- 
tions scattered throughout his work. For interesting study 
of this whole subject see The Laureate's Country, by A. J. 
Church (1891) ; Ln Tennyson Land, by J. Gumming Walters ; 
** Lincolnshire Scenery and Character as Illustrated by Mr. 
Tennyson," Macmillan's Magazine, November and April, 1873- 
1874, and Homes and Haunts of the British Poets, by William 
Howitt ; Phillips' Manual of English Literature, vol. ii. 

2. Tennyson's Theory ofArt,—*' The Palace of Art," " The 
Day Dream (Moral and L'Envoi)," ''The Flower/ "The 
Poet," *' The Poet's Mind." In conuection with ** The Palace 



RECENT WRITERS 601 

of Art '* the whole question of the relative value of the moral 
dT ethical, and the aesthetic elements in a poem or work of 
art can h^ appropriately considered. Cf. views of Milton, 
Wordsworth. Keats, Ruskin, William Morris, and Browning ; 
for latter, v. p. 412 et seq. Moral earnestness as a characteristic 
element in English literature ; v. Leslie Stephen's essay on 
Wordsworth's Ethics in Rows in a Library, Third Series ; T7ie 
Gay Science, by E. S. Dallas ; J. A. Symonds' article, " Is Poetry 
at Bottom a Criticism of Life? " in Essays Speculative Sind Svg- 
gestivCy vol. ii. 

3. Tennyson as a Teacher, (a) Ideas of democracy and social 
reform: class distinctions as a bar to marriage, etc. ** The 
Gardener's Daughter,'' '* The Miller's Daughter," ''Locksley 
Hall," ** Aylmer's Field," " Lady Clara Yere de Yere," '* Lady 
Clare," *'The Beggar Maid," *'Maud." Of. Browning's 
*' Youth and Art." (b) Political poems, " You Ask Me Why 
the' 111 at Ease," **0f Old Sat Freedom on the Heights," and 
*' Love Thou Thy Land " ; and in general for Tennyson's atti- 
tude to his time, *' Locksley Hall," and '* Locksley Hall Sixty 
Y(;ars After." Study in this connection : Reform agitations 
m England from 1815 to Reform Bill, 1832 ; changes loroughi 
by science ; social changes. Chartists, Corn Laws, etc. Cf. 
political attitude of Tennyson with that of Shelley and Byron. 
Fov effect of recent inventions compare with second ** Locks- 
^y Hall," Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies and Queen of the Air, 
Frederic Harrison's essay on '*The Nineteenth Century," in 
The Choice of Books. For Tennyson's use of science, v, 
Dowdeu's Studies in Literature ; Shairp's Poetic Interpretation 
of Nature, lect. iii., iv.; Stedman's Victorian Poets, introduc- 
tion; ** Effect of Scientific Temper in Modern Poetr3^" two 
articles by Yida D. Scudder, Andover Hexiew, September, 
October, 1887. 

4. The Idylls of the Kiiig. The following Idylls are sug- 
gested as the most essential to an understanding of the design 
of the entire work : '* The Coming of Arthur," *' Gareth and 
Lynette," ** The Holy Grail," '' Guinevere," •' The Passing of 
Arthur,"** Epilogue." 

5. In Memoriam. A Key to Tennyson's In Memoriam, b;y 



502 INTEODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Alfred Gatty ; Genung's Tennyson's In Memoriam : Its Purpose 
and Structure; Davidson's Prolegomena to In Memoriam, 

(B) Biography and Criticism. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 
a Memoir, hy Ms son, A. Waugh's Alfred, Lord Tennyson: 
A Study of His Life and Work, is a most satisfactory 
biography. H. J. Jennings' Alfred Tennyson is shorter, but 
also good. See also Howitt's Haunts and Homes of the 
British Poets, and Phillips' Manual of English Literature, 
vol. ii. (Tennyson); Becords of Tennyson, Buskin and Brown- 
ing, by Anne Thackeray Ritchie; Dowden's Studies in 
Literature (for a most penetrating comparative study of 
Tennyson and Browning); Japp's Three Great Teachers; 
Bayne's Lessons from my Masters; Bageliofs Literary Studies 
(comparison of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning); 
Brooke's Tennyson, his Art and Belation to Modern Life. 

Bobert Browning. (A) Study of Works. I. Andrea dd 
Sarto. (a) The situation ; it is a dramatic monologue, (b) The 
harmony of the situation with the spiritual atmosphere of the 
poem; it is **a twilight piece." Other instances of use of 
*• dramatic background," v. Shakespeare Study List, %5 b, (c) 
The character of Andrea. A ** half -man." The weakness 
which makes him constantly seek to shift the responsibility for 
his misdoings on fate or chance. All is ** as God o'er-rules." 
Andrea has the kind of nature, the artistic susceptibility to 
sensuous beauty, joined with a lack of moral fiber and a weak- 
ness of will, which would make him a ready prey to such a 
woman as Lucrezia. (d) The character of Lucrezia. The skill 
with which it is shown reflected in Andrea's words and life. 
Her selfishness ; sordid love of money ; utter lack of feeling for 
art except as a money-making agency ; her treachery and 
duplicity ; her marvelous but unspiritual beauty, (e) The art 
teaching of the poem ; technical perfection insufficient for the 
production of the highest art. *'A man's reach must exceed 
his grasp, or what's a heaven for." Art may suffer from 
moral flaws in the character of the artist. Of, Tennyson's 
•• Theory of Art," Tennyson Study List, § 2 ; Ruskin's 
'* Theory of Art," etc. 

II. Clean, (a) The setting of the poem. As in** Andrea del 



EECENT WRITERS 503 

Sarto,'^ the note is struck at the outset. Here It is a background 
of Greek beauty and grace worthy of Alma Tadema. (*' The 
portico royal with sunset," ** The lyric woman in her crocus 
vest," etc.) (J)) Cleon the heir to all the treasures of Greek 
civilization, (c) Cleon's dissatisfaction with life arises from 
his finding it '* inadequate to joy." Of. the cause of dissatisfac- 
tion in " The Epistle of Karshish," and in '^Saul " with that 
of Cleon. The argument for future life in these and other 
poems : (1) The inadequacy of this life implies another. 
(2) The misery of this life can only be reconciled with the 
harmonious design elsewhere observable in nature, by con- 
sidering it as preparation for another. 

m. Othei' Poems. As Browning is a difficult author at the 
first approach, the following poems, to be read in the order 
here given, are suggested as one convenient mode of access : 
1. Love poems: ** Evelyn Hope"; *'By the Fireside"; 
*' One Word More " ; ** The Last Ride Together " ; '* Love 
Among the Ruins." 2. Narrative: '* Martin Relph " ; 
**Mul6ykeh"; '^Iv^n Iv^novitch " ; **The Flight of the 
Duchess"; ** Olive." 3. Art poems: *'My Last Duchess"; 
** Andrea del Sarto " ; " Fra Lippo Lippi " ; ** Pictor Ignotus " ; 
"A Toccatta of Galluppi's"; '* Master Hugues of Saxe- 
Gotha"; *' Abt Vogler." 4. Dramas: '^Luria"; **ABlotinthe 
*8cutcheon"; *' Paracelsus." 5. Immortality and Religion: 
** Rabbi Ben Ezra"; "Epistle of Karshish"; "Cleon"; 
* ' Prospice " ; " Saul " ; " A Death in the Desert " ; " Christmas 
Eve," and "Easter Day"; "Rephan." 6. Longer poems: 
** The Ring and the Book.' 

(B) BioGKAPHY AND Criticism. Sh2irp's Life of Browni7ig 
is the best that has yet appeared. Mrs. Orr's Life (2 vols.) is 
longer and contains much information not to be found else- 
where; it is unsatisfactory in its criticisms, and unreliable in 
its statements as to Browning's religious belief. See also 
Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett (1899). 
Dowden's Studies in Literature contains one of the best and 
most compact statements of the central motive of Browning's 
poetry. Among the many Introductions to Browning, Alex- 
ander's Poetry of Robert Browning, and Symons' Study of 
Browning, may be mentioned. 



504 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 

n. GENERAL NOTES AND REFERENCES FOR 
RECENT PERIOD. 

1. History. For general history of the time to the acces- 
sion of Queen Victoria, see Fyffe's History of Modern Europe^ 
3 vols., or, for general historical outline, Fisher's Outlines of 
Universal History, or 'flyers' Medi(Eval and Modern History, may 
be used. For England, Bright's History of (vol. iv. comes 
down to 1880) ; Spencer Walpole's History of England since 
1815 ; Oscar Browning's Epochs of Modern History. See, also, 
for interesting study of English colonization, Seeley's Expan- 
sion of England ; for industrial changes, Gibbins' Industrial 
History of England in tJie Eighteentli Century ; for Parliamen- 
tary history, Spencer ^alpole's The Electorate and the Legisla- 
ture, in The English Citizens Series. For Victorian Age 
consult, also, McCarthy's History of Our Own Times, 2 vols., 
and McCarthy's England under Gladstone, also The Reign of 
Queen Victoria, edited hy T. H. Ward, 2 vols., which contains 
a good chapter on Victorian literature. 

2. Literary History axd Criticism. For general literary 
movemetits of the time, Dowden's Studies in Literature, and 
Dowden's Transcripts and Studies, will be found especially 
helpful. A comparison of Elizabethan with Victorian poetry 
will be found in J. A. Symonds' Essays Speculative and Sug- 
gestive, vol. ii. Shairp's Poetic Interpretation of jS'^ature includes 
careful study of the increase of feeling for nature in English 
eighteenth century poetry ; on this see also Stopford Brooke's 
Theology in the English Poets. For general survey of the 
literature of the period, Stedman's Victorian Poets, Henry 
Morley's Literaturein the Age of Victoria, and Sharp's Victorian 
Poets. Mrs. Oliphant's Literary History of England in tlie End 
of the Eighteentli and Beginning of tJie Nineteenth Centuries is 
rather a series of short and critical studies than a history of 
the literary period of which it treats. Her more recent book 
on Victorian Literature contains much biographical informa- 
tion. De Quincey has many essays on the great authors of 
his time, and Bagehot's Literary Studies, 2 vols., will be fouBd 
of value. 



APPENDIX 



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518 APPENDIX 

TABLE YII.— RISE OF THE DRAMA— 1110-1566. 



SOVEREIGNS. 



Henry v., 1413-1422. 

Henry VI., 1422; died 

1471. 
Wars of the Roses, 1455 

to 1485. 
Edward IV., died 1483. 
Edward v., died 1483. 
Richard*III., died 1485. 

Henry VII., 1485-1509. 



Henry VIIL, 1509-1547 



The first known dramatic production in Eng- 
land, the French Miracle play, " St. Kather- 
ine," acted at Dunstable about 1110. 

Institution of the Festival of Corpus Christi 
(1264) gave an impulse to performance of 



Street plays or pageants first performed about 
1268. 

Whitsuntide plays at Chester about 1268; prob- 
ably in French at this date. 

East Midland play, " Abraham and Isaac," 
middle of fourteenth century. 

York cycle of plays about 1340-1360 ; earliest 
known MS., 1430. 

Tovvnley cycle of about thirty plays belonging 
to Woodkirk Abbey. 

Coventry plays, cir. fifteenth or sixteenth 
centuries. 

Chester Whitsun-plays, "Fall of Lucifer," 
"Noah's Flood," etc., composed probably 
early part of fourteenth century ; earliest 
MS., 1581. 

Morality Plays; "Play of Paternoster," prob- 
ably in Edward III.'s reign. Oldest extant 
morality plays, " The Castle of Constancy," 
etc., in reign of Henry VI. 

Interludes : 

John Heywood, 1506 (?-)1565. 

"The Four P's," about 1520. 

Earliest extant regular comedy, 

Nicholas Udal, 1504 (?)-1557 (?). 

"Ealph Roister Bolster" (acted cir. 1551), 

(published 1566). 
" Gammer Gurton's Needle," by Bishop Still, 

about 1566. 
Thomas Sackville, 1586-1608. 
*' Ferrex and Porrex," or the Tragedy of "Gor- 

boduc," played 1561, printed in 1565. 



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APPENDIX 



527 



TABLE XI.— THE HISTORY OF THE NOVEL 



PRECURSORS OP THE NOVEL. 

Early Epics. Beowulf. 

Mediaeval Cycles of Romance. 
Arthurian Komances ; Charle- 
magne Romances ; " Life of 
Alexander;" ''Siege of Troy." 
(By the end of the fourteenth 
century these had become popu- 
lar in English.) Spanish, " Ama- 
dis de Gaul ; " Teutonic, " Nibe- 
limgenlie^,", 

The Metrical Romance was an 
important literary form from the 
Norman Conquest to Chaucer ; 
e. g., " Romance of Sir Tristrem," 
versified ci7\ 1270 ; '' Havelok the 
Dane," m'.1270-80; "King Horn," 
cir. 1280 ; " Guy of Warwick ; " 
" Sir Isumbras," etc. (Many 
Metrical Romances were retold in 
])rose.) 

^atin Prose Tales. " Gesta Ro- 
manorum." (Compiled early in 
the fourteenth century; translated 
into English prose in the reign of 
Henry VI.) 

Prose Romances. Malory, "Morte 
D'Arthur," cir. 1470, printed 1485. 
(Other Romances were translated 
and printed by Caxton, and later 
by Wynkyn de Worde.) 

ELIZABETHAN ROMANCES. 

(Italian Influence.) 

More. "Utopia," 1516. 

Paynter. " Palace of Pleasure," 
vol. i 1566. 

Lyly. "Euphues," 1579. 

Greene. " Mamillia," 1580. 

Lodge. "Forbonius and Prisce- 
ria," 1584. 

Greene. " Pandosto," 1588. 

Sidney. "Arcadia," 1590. 

Lodge. "Rosalind," 1590. 

Greene. Cony-catching pamph- 
lets, 1591-92. 

Nash. " Pierce Penniless," 1592. 

Nash. "Unfortunate Traveler," 
etc., 1593. 

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY 
ROMANCES. 

(French Influence.) 
^'Examples need not be here given. 



The Heroic Romance lasted well 
through the century.) 

RISE or THE MODERN NOVEL. 

Seventeenth-century Charac r - 

writers : 
Hall. " Characters of Virtue . cd 

Vices," 1608. 
Overbury. " Characters," 1614. 
Earle. "Microcosmography," 1628. 

Religious Allegory : 

Bunyan. "Pilgrim's Progress," 

1678-84. 
Groicth of Eealisrn : 
Defoe. "Apparition of Mrs. Veal,'* 

1706. 
Sketches of Contemporary Life : 
Addison and Steele. " Sir Roger 
de Coverley Papers" (m Specta- 
tor, founded 1711). 
Bealistic Narrative : 
Defoe. " Robinson Crusoe," 1719- 
20. 
" Memoirs of a Cavalier," 1720. 
"Moll Flanders," 1721. 
"Colonel Jack," 1721. 
"Journal of the Plague Year," 

1722. 
" Roxana," 1724. 
Swift. " Gulliver's Travels," 1726. 

NOVEL OF DOMESTIC LIFE BEGINS 
"WITH : 

Richardson. " Pamela," 1740. 
Fielding. "Joseph Andrews," 

1742. 
Fielding. " Jonathan Wild," 1743. 
Sarah Fielding. " David Simple," 

1744. 
Richardson. " Clarissa Harlowe." 

1748. 
Fielding. " Tom Jones." 1749. 
Paltock.* " Peter Wilkins," 1750. 
Fielding. " Amelia." 1751. 
Smollett. " Peregrine Pickle," 

1751. 
Richardson. " Sir Charles Gran- 

dison," 1753. 
Smollett. " Ferdinand, Count 

Fathom," 1753. 
Johnson.* " Rasselas," 175a 



♦Stories of Romance and Adventure in this eection are marked with an 
asterisk. 



528 



APPENDIX 



TABLE XL -THE HISTORY OF THE '^OY'Eh-Confd 



Sterne. " Tristram Shandy " (vols. 

i. and ii.), 1759. 
Walpole.* " Castle of Otranto," 

1764. 

Goldsmith. " The Vicar of Wake- 
field," 1766. 

Mackenzie.* " The Man of Feel- 
ing," 1771. 

Smollett. " HuniDhre}^ Clinker," 
1771. 

Clara Reeve.* "The Old English 
Baron," 1777. 

Frances Burney. "Evelina," 1778. 

Frances Burney. " Cecilia." 1782. 

Beckford.* " Vathek," 1784.. 

REVIVAL OF ROMANTICISM. 

(German Inflnence.) 

Ann Radcliffe.* " Ca«t]es of Ath- 
lin and Dnnbayne," 1789. 

Aan Radcliffe.* "A Sicilian Ro- 
mance." 1790. 

Godv/in. " Caleb Williams," 1794. 

Ann Radcliffe.* " The Mysteries 
of Udolpho," 1794. 



M. G. Lewis.* *' The Monk," 
1795. 

Ann Radcliffe.* "The Italian," 
1797. 

Lamb. " Rosamond Grey," 1798. 

M.G.Lewis.* '^ Tales of Terror," 
1799. 

Maria Edgeworth. "Castle Rack- 
rent," 1800. 

Maria Edgeworth. "Moral 
Tales," 1801. 

M. G. Lewis.* " Tales of Won- 
der," 1801. 

Jane Porter.* " Thaddeus of 
Warsaw," 1803. 

Maturin.* " The Fatal Revenge," 
1807. 

Jane Porter.* "The Scottish 
Chiefs," 1810. 

Shelley.* "Zastrozzi," 1810. 

Jane Austin. "Sense and Sensi- 
bility." 1811. 

Jane Austin. "Mansfield Park," 
1814. 

Scott.* "Waverley," 1814. 



* Stories of Romance and Adventure in this section are marked with an 
asterisk. 



APPENDIX 529 

TABLE XII. —MODERN ENGLISH* PERIOD * 



HISTORICAL 

EVENTS. 



Catholic Emanci- 
pation Bill, 1829. 

William IV., 

1830-1837. 

Lord Grey, Prime 
Minister, 1830. 

Opening of Liver- 
pool and Man- 
chester Railroad, 
1830. 

Reform Agitation, 
1831. 

Parliamentary Re- 
form Bill, 1832. 

New Poor Law, 
1834. 

System of National 
Education be- 
gun, 1834. 

Victoria, 1837. 

First Electric Tele- 
graph patented 
and used, 1837. 

Rise of Trades 
Unions, 1837. 

Rise of Chartism, 
1837. 

The Queen's Mar- 
riage to Prince 
Albert of Saxe- 
Coburg, 1840. 

Oxford Movement, 
begun about 1833. 

Sir Robert Peel, 
Prime Minister, 
1841. 

Chartist Riots, 1842. 
Graham's Factory 

Bill, 1844. 
Repeal of the Corn 

Laws, 1846. 



Savage 
1775- 



Walter 
Lander, 

1864. 
Poems, 1795. 
Thomas Babing- 

ton Macaulay, 

1800-1859. 
" Lays of Ancient 

Rome," 1842. 
Leigh Hunt, 1784- 

1859. 
"Juvenilia," 1802. 
" The Story of Rim- 
ini," 1816. 
Thomas Hood, 

1798-1845. 
" Whims and Oddi- 
ties," 1826. 
" Poems of Wit and 

Humor, ' 1847. 
Elizabeth Barrett 

Browning, 1809- 

1861. 
Poems, 1826. 
" Aurora Leigh," 

1856. 
John Keble, 1792- 

1866. 
" The Christian 

Year," 1827. 
Alfred Tennyson 

(Lord), 1809-1892. 
'• Timbuctoo," 1829. 
Poems, 1830. 
" Idylls of the 

King," 1858-1886. 
'' Demeter, and other 

Poems." 1889. 
Robert Browning, 

1812-1889. 
" Pauline," 1833. 
" Men and Women,** 

1855. 
'' The Ring and the 

Book," 1868. 
" Dramatic Idylls," 

1879-1880. 
'^ Asolando," 1889. 



Walter Savage Landor, 1775- 

1864. 
" Imaginary Conversations," 1824- 

1853. 
Maria Edgeworth, 1767-1849. 
" Castle Rackrent," 1800. 
" Popular Tales," 1804. 
" Helen," 1834. 
Sydney Smith, 1771-1845. 
" Letters on the Catholics from 

Peter Plymley," 1808. 
Essays, 1802-1828. 
Leigh Hunt, 1784-1859. 
" The Examiner," 1808. 
" Table Talk," 1850. 
Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881. 
Translation of *' Wiihelm Meister," 

1824. 
" Sartor Resartus," 18a3-1834. 
'' The French Revolution," ISg^ 
Thomas Babington MacauCay 

1800-1859. 
Milton (Essay on), 1825. 
Essays, 1843. 
" History of England from Janes 

II.," 1848-1860. 
Edward Bulv/er (Lord Lytto' ), 

1805-1873. 
'' Pelham," 1827. 
" The Last of the Barons," 184S 
*' The Parisians," 1872-1873. 
Benjamin Disraeli (Earl >f 

Beaconsfield), 1804-1881. 
" Vivian Grey," 1826-1827. 
" Endymion," 18S0. 
Charles Dickens, 1812-1870. 
" Sketches by Boz," 1834-1836. 
" David Copperfield," 1849-1850. 
•' Bleak House," 1852-1853. 
" Our Mutual Friend," 1864-1865 
William Makepeace Thac"'^ 

eray, 1811-1863. 
" The Yellowplush Papers," 1837. 
'' Vanity Fair," 1847-1848. 
*' The Newcomes," 1854-1855. 
John Henry Newman, 1801-1890. 
" Arians of the Fourth Century," 

1833. 



* The position of an author in this table is determined by the 
date of his first publicatioiie 



530 APPENDIX 

TABLE XII.— MODERN ENGLISH FEUIOD— Continue 



HISTORICAL 

EVENTS. 



Ministry of Lord 
John Kussell, 
1847. 

Downfall of the 
Chartists, 18i8. 

Free Libraries es- 
tablished, 1850. 

Death of the Duke 
of Wellington, 
1852. 

Crimean War, 1854- 
1856. 

Charge of the 

Light Brigade 

at Balaklava, 

1854. 

Battle of Inker- 

mann, 1854. 
Siege of Sebasto- 

pol, 1854. 
Fall of Sebasto- 

pol, 1855. 
Peace made with 
Russia by the 
Treaty of Paris, 
1856.' 
Indian Mutiny, 

1857. 
Siege of Lucknow, 

1857. 
Massacre of Cawn- 

pore, 1857. 
End of East India 

Company, 1858. 

Jews admitted to 

Parliament, 1858. 

Death of Prince 

Consort, 1861. 
Gladstone, Leader 
of House of Com- 
mons, 1866. 
Parliamentary Re- 
form Bill, 1867. 
Disraeli, Prime 

Minister, 1867. 
Mr. Foster's Edu- 
cation Act, 1870. 



T. Level! Beddoes, 
1803-1849. 

" Death's Jest- 

book," 1850. 

Sidney Dobell, 
1824-1874. 

" The Roman," 1850. 

" England in Tmie 
of War," 1856. 

Hartley Coleridge, 
1796-1849. 

" Worthies of York- 
shire and Lanca- 
shire," 1836. 

Poems, 1851. 

Arthur Hugh 

Clough, 1819-1861. 

" The Bothie of To- 
ber-na-Vuolich," 
IS ^8 

" Dipsychus," 1862. 

Matthew Arnold, 
1822-1688. 

" The Strayed Rev- 
eller," and other 
Poems, 1848. 

" Empedocles on 
Etna," 1853. 

Poems, 1855. 

William Morris, 
1834-1896. 

" The Defense of 
Guinevere," and 
other Poems. 1858. 

" The Earthly Para- 
dise," 1868-1870. 

Dante Gabriel Ros- 
setti, 1828-1882. 

" The Early Italian 
Poets," 1861 ; re- 
published as 
" Dante and His 
Circle," 1873. 

Poems, 1870-1882. 

Algernon Charles 
Swinburne, 1837. 

" Rosamond," 1861. 

Poems and Ballads, 
1866-1889. 



" Apologia pro Vita Sua." 1864. 

Charles Darwin, 1809-1882. 

" Journal of Researches," 1839- 
1845. 

" On the Origin of Species," 1859. 

" The Descent of Man." 1871. 

John Ruskin, 1819-1900. 

'• Salsette and Eleohanta," 1839. 

" Modern Painters," 184-3-1860. 

'- Ethics of the Dust," 1865. 

" Prseterita " (begun). 1885. 

Charles Kingsley, 1819-1875. 

'■ Village Sermons," 1844. 

" Hvpatia," 1853. 

" Here ward, 1866. 

George Grote, 1794-1871. 

'■The History of Greece," 1846^ 
1856. 

Herbert Spencer, 1820. 

•' The Proper Sphere of Govern- 
ment," 1842. 

'' Principles of Biology," 1864. 

"Principles of Sociology" (voL 
i.), 1876. 

Charlotte Bronte, 1816-1855. 

" Jane Evre," 1847. 

" Villette," 1853. 

" The Professor," 1857. 

Emily Bronte, 1818-1848. 

'•' Wutheriug Heights," 1847. 

Elizabeth Gaskell, 1810-1866. 

" :yrary Barton," 1848. 

" Wives and Daughters," 1866. 

Anthony TroUope, 1815-1882. 

" The Macdermotts of Bally- 
cloran," 1847. 

" Barchester Towers," 1857. 

" Phineas Finn," 1869. 

James A. Froude, 1818-1894. 

" The Nemesis of Fate." 1848. , 

" History of England," 1856-1869. 

Charles Reade, 1814-1884. 

" Peg Woffington," 1852. 

" The Cloister and the Hearth," 
1860. 

" A Woman Hater," 1877. 

Henry T. Buckle, 1822-1862. 

" History of Civilization in Eu- 
rope," 1857-1861. 

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans 
Cross), 1820-1881. 

" Scenes of Clerical Life," 1858. 



APPENDIX 531 

TABLE XIL— MODERN ENGLISH FEmOD— Continued 



HISTORICAL 

EVENTS. 



Victoria, Empregs 
of India, 1876. 

Outbreak of Zulu 
War, 1879. 

Gladstone, Prime 
Minister, 1880. 

Bill for "Repre- 
sentation of the 
People," 1885. 



Henry Austin 

Dobson, 1840. 

" Vignettes in 

Rhyme," 1873. 

" Proverbs in Porce- 
lain," 1877. 

" At the Sign of the 
Lyre," 1885. 

James Thomson, 
1834-1882. 

" The City of Dread- 
ful Night," 1874. 

" Vane's Story," 
1881. 

Andrew Lang, 

1844. 

" Ballads in Blue 
China," 1880. 

" Rhymes a la 
Mode," 1885. 

Sir Edwin Arnold, 
1832. 

" The Light of 
Asia," 1879. 

William Watson, 
1844. 

'* The Prince's 

Quest," 1880. 

'' W o rds wort h's 

Grave," 1889. 
Poems, 1892. 



" Romola," 1863. 

" Middlemarch," 1871-1872. 

" Daniel Deronda," 1876. 

Essavs, 1883. 

Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888. 

" Essays in Criticism,'' 1865-1888. 

Mixed Essavs, 1879. 

Irish Essays, 1882. 

William Edward Lecky, 1838. 

" History of Rationalism in Eu- 
rope," 1865. 

" History of England in the Eight- 
eenth Century," 1878 

Richard Blackmore, 1825-1900. 

" Lorn a Doone," 1869. 

Leslie Stephen, 1832. 

" The Playground of Europe," 
1871. 

" Hours in a Library," 1874-1879. 

Walter Pater, 1839-1894, 

" Studies in the Renaissance," 1873. 

" Appreciations." 1889. 

John Richard Greene, 1837-1883. 

'* A Short History of the English 
People," 1874. 

" The Makinor of England," 1882. 

William Stubbs (Bishop of Ox- 
ford), 1825-1901. 

" Constitutional History of Eng- 
land," 1874-1878. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1845- 
1894. 

" Virginibus Puerisque," 1881. 

"Kidnapped," 1886. 

" The Master of Ballantrae," 188.0. 





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= IJXXFr 



LIST OF AUTHORS TO ACCOMPANT 
LITERARY MAP 

The following is a list of some of the most representative men in EngliL , 
literature. By referring to the accompanying map, the student will besbU 
to find their birthplaces as well as some of the localities in which they hava 
lived. Where the names of the smaller places have been omitted on the 
map, the county in which they are situated can be found from the follow- 
ing list, and their general situation on the map approximately determined. 

Addison, Joseph, b. Millston, Wilts, 1. London. 
Alfred, King, b. Wantage, Berks, 1. Winchester, Hants. 
Arthurian Legends, chiefly located in Cornwall. 

Bacon, Francis (Lord St. Albans), b. London, 1. St. Albans, 

Hertford. 
Bede, or Baeda, b. Monkwearmouth, Durham, 1. Jarrow, 

Korthumberland . 
Beaumont, Francis, b. Grace-Dieu, Leicester. 
Blake, Wm. , b. and 1. London. 
Browne, Sir Thomas, b. and 1. London. 
Browning, Robert, b. and 1. London. 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, b. Durham, 1. London. 
Bunyan, John, b. Elstow, near Bedford, Bedfordshire. 
Burke, Edmund, b. Dublin, 1. London, etc. 
Butler, Samuel, b. Strensham, Worcester. 
Burns, Robert, b. near Ayr, Ayrshire, Scotland. 
Byron, Lord George Gordon, b. London, 1. Newstead Abbey 

JSTottingham. 

Caedmon, b. (?), 1. Whitby, York. 
Carlyle, Thomas, b. Ecclefechan, near Annan, Scotland. 
Chatterton, Thomas, b. Bristol, Gloucester. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, b. and 1. London. 
Clough A^thuF H\igh, b. Liverpool, Lancashire. 

538 



534 APPENDIX 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, b. Ottery-St.-Marj, Devon, 1. Kes 

wick, Cumberland (Lake Country). 
Collins, Wm., b. Chichester, Sussex. 
Cowley, Abraham, b. and 1. London. 
Cowper, Wm., b. Great Berkhampstead, Hertford, 1. Olneyc 

Bucks. 
Crabbe, George, b. Aldborough, Suffolk. 
Crashaw, Richard, b. and 1. London. 

Dekker, Thomas, b. and 1. London. 

Defoe, Daniel, b. London, 1. London, Tilbury, etc. 

De Quincey, Thomas, b. near Manchester, 1. Grasmere, West 

moreland (Lake Country). 
Dickens, Charles, b. Laiidport, Hampshire, L London. 
Donne, John, b. and 1. London. 

Drummond, Wm., b. Hawthornden, near Edinburgh. 
Dryden, John, b, Aldwinkle, All Saints, Northampton, 1. 

London. 

Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans Cross), b. Coventry, War- 
wick. 
Fielding, Henry, b. Sharpham Park, Somerset. 
Fletcher; John, b. Northampton, 1, Ryeland, Sussex. 

Gay, John, b. Frithelstock, Devon, 1. Barnstaple, Devon. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, b. Pallas, Ireland, 1. London, etc. 
Gray, Thomas, b. London, 1. Stoke Pogis, Bucks. 

Habington, Wm., b. Hendlip, near Worcester, Wor- 
cestershire. 

Hall, Joseph, b. Bristow Park, Leicestershire. 

Herbert, George, b. near [Montgomery, Shropshire, 1. Bemer 
ton, near Salisbury. 

Herrick, Robert, b. London, 1. Dean's Prior, Devon. 

Hogg, James, b. Ettrick, Selkirkshire, Scotland. 

Howard, Henry (Earl of Surrey), b. (?) 1. Surrey, Sussex, 

Jolmson, Samuel, b. Lichfield, Stafford, 1. London. 
Jonson, Benjamin, b. Westminster, 1, London, 



APPENDIX o35 

Keats, John, b. and 1. London. 

Lamb, Charles, b. and 1. London. 

Langland, Wm., b, probably in Shropshire, I. Malvern Hills. 

Macaulay, Thos. Babington, b. Rothley Temple, Leicester, 

1. London. 
Marlowe, Christopher, b. Canterbury, Kent, 1. London. 
Marvell, Andrew, b. Winestead, near Hull, York, 1. London. 
Milton, John, b. and 1. London, and Horton, Bucks. 
More, Sir Thomas, b. and 1. London. 

Peele, George, b. (?), 1. London. 

Pope, Alexander, b. and 1. London and Twickenham, 
Middlesex. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, b. Devon, 1. London. 
Ramsay, Allan, Lanarkshire, Scotland, 1. London. 
Richardson, Samuel, b. Derbyshire, 1. London. 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, b. and 1. London. 

Sackvine, Thomas (Lord Buckhurst), b. Buckhurst, Sussex, 

1. London. 
Scott, Sir AValter, b. Edinburgh, 1. Abbotsford, near Melrose. 
Shakespeare, TV'm., b. Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick, 1. 

London. 
Shelley, Percy Bjsshe, b. Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex 
Southey, Robert, b. Bristol, Gloucester, 1. Keswick, Cuml)er- 

land (Lake Country). 
Steele, Richard, b. Dublin, 1. London. 
Suckling, John, b. Twickenham, .Middlesex, 1. London. 
Swift, Jonathan, b. Dublin, 1. London, Dublin, etc. 

Taylor, Jeremy, b. Cambridge. 

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, b. Somersby, Lincoln,!. Farringford 

House, Isle of Wight, and Blackdown, in Sussex. 

Thomson, James, b. and 1. Ednam, Roxburgh. 



536 APPENDIX 

Waller, Edmund, b. Coleshill, Hertford, 1. London. 

Walton, Izaak, b. Stafford, 1. London. 

Wyclif, John, b. Hipswell (?), near Richmond, York, 1. 

Oxford. 
Wither, George, b. Brentnorth, Hampshire. 
Wordsworth, Wm., b. Cockermouth, 1. Grasmere and Ryda' 

Mount (Lake Country). 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, b. Allington Castle, Kent. 

Young, Edward, b. Upham, near Winchester, HampshirCc 



INDEX. 



A 

Abbot, The, 343 

Abbotsford, 340 

xicting, early, 134 

Addison, 201, 204. 206 ; and 
Steele, 205, 206; as social 
reformer, 205 ; biography 
and criticism, 206-207; 
character and work, 206 ; 
essay and the novel, 206 ; 
life of, 204 ; Macaulay on, 
206; poem on T/ie Cam- 
'paign, 205 ; poem on The 
Peace of Bysicick, 204 ; 
Richardson and Fielding, 
206; Study List, 206 

-^Ifric, 45 ; as educational 
and monastic reformer, 46 

^neas, 58. 

^neid, Vergil's, 105 

Agincourt, 133 

Agincourt, Battle of^ 129 

Aidan, 31, 32 

Alcuin, 45 

Aldhelm, 32, 39 

Alexander the Great, early 
poems on, 54 

Alfoxden, 312, 326 

Alfred, 42 ; account of his 
work, 42 ; as a translator, 
44 ; as educational reformer, 
42 ; ^ TJie Chronicle, 43 ; 
heroism of, 42 ; his transla- 
tiojus, 43 ; revival of learn- 



ing under, 42 ; The Saying 

of, 57 ; Alfred to Norman 

Conquest, from, 45 
America, 103, 261 ; republic 

of, 262 
Anacreon, 2 
Analogy of Religion, Natural 

and Revealed, to the Consti* 

tution and Course of Nature, 

257 
Anchoressis, Rule of, see 

Ancren Riicle 
Ancren Riicle, The, 60 
Andrea del Sarto, 490, 503 
Andreas, The, 37 
Angles, 13 
Anglo-Saxons, 12 
Anjou, Margaret of, 100 
A n nals, see Ch ron icles 
Anne, Queen, 198, 199 
Anselm, 49 ; succeeds Lnn- 

franc, 52 
Arcadia, Sidney's, 112, 118 
Arden, forest of, 20, 136 
Arden, Mary, 135 
Ariosto, 106, 107, 120 
Aristotle, 72 
Armada, Spanish, 16, 108, 

115, 127 
Armour, Jean, 304 
Arnold, Matthew, 433, i35. 

436, 452, 453, 459, 46.' ; as 

critic, 438 ; as poet, -^'oe ; 

Culture and Anarchy 4^ ; 

On th^ Transl/ifiiiQ ^ 



53S 



INlDlgX. 



Homer, 438 ; Switzerland, 

438 ; Tristram and Iseidt, 

437 
Art of Poetry, Boileau, 193, 

194 
Arthur, King, 54 ; epic of, 

55, 58, 59, 69 
Aryan, table of, races, note^ 12 
Aschara, 123, 155, 162 
Asser, 42 

Astrolabe, treatise on, 76 
Athelstane, 45 
Athelwald, 45 ; as a reformer, 

46 
Athencbum, The, 400 
Austen, Jane, 489 ; Sense and 

Sensibility, 439 
Avignon. 72 
Avon, 136 

B 

Bacon, Sir Francis, 112, 154, 
198 ; Advancement of Learn- 
ing, 157 ; Essays, 158, 159 ; 
Henry VII I. , History of, 
158 ; his life, 156 ; Mw 
Atlantis, 158 ; Lord Chan- 
cellor, lo6, 157 

Baeda, see Bede 

Bailly, Harry, 82, 83 

Balaclava, 16 

Balder, 22 

Ball, John, 71 

Ballades, John Gower, 78 

Bannockburn, 307 

Barrett, Elizabeth (Mrs. 
Browning), 484 ; Sonnets, 
484 

Bastille, the, 308 

Beattie, James, 271 ; The 
Minstrel, 271, 272 

Beaumont, 169 

Becket, St. Thomas a, 70, 81 

Bede, 40, 43 

Beowulf, 25 

Bible, the English, 167; 
translation of, 103 



BiograpMa Literaria, 40t 
Biscop, Benedict, 31 
Black Death, the, 71 
Blackdown, in Surrey, 470 
Blackfriars Theater, 170 
Blackstone, Commentaries on 

the Laics of England, 267 
Blackwood's Magazine, 400 
Blair, 263 ; Ihe Grave, 263 
Blake, William, 273, 274, 278, 

460; Edward III., 274 
Boccaccio, 73, 82 
Boethius, The Consolation oj 

Philosophy, 43, 76 
Boileau, 7, 8 
Bolingbroke, 256 
Bologna, 7, 101 
Bossuet, 192 
Bosworth, battle of, 361 
Boyer, Elizabeth, 120 
Bride of Lammermoor, The^ 

344 
Brindley, James, 261 
Brink, Ten, note, 59 
Brithnoth, Death of, 44 
British Kings, History of, 55 
Britons, the, 12, 17, 18 
Brooke, Henry, 2he Universal 

Beauty, 264 
Brooke, Stopford, traLslation, 

note, 14 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 155 
Browning, E. B., 406 
Browning, Robert, 320, 406, 

452, 462, 482 ; Abt Vogler, 

494 ; Andrea del Sarto, 490, 
502 ; as a poet, 473, 485 ; 
as teacher, 491 ; Asolando, 
485 ; By the Fireside, 485, 

495 ; Christmas Eve, 488 ; 
Cleon, 491 ; compared with 
George Eliot, 493; com- 
pared with Milton, 493; 
compared with Shakes- 
peare, 493 ; criticism of his 
poetry, 486-491; dramatic 
monologue, 489 j Epistle oi 



orDsx 



639 



Karshisk, 413 ; Fra Lippo 
Lippit 489 ; his dramatic 
power, 493; his genius, 
483 ; his intellectual force, 
496 ; his marriage, 485 ; 
his metaphors, 489 ; his 
optimism, 491 ; his view of 
life, 492 ; his work, 495 ; 
Ivan Ranovitchy 489 ; life 
in Florence, 485 ; main 
points in his teaching, 494 ; 
Martin Eelph, 489 ; Master 
Hugues of Saxe Qothay 490 ; 
Men and Women y 495 ; My 
Last DucJiesSy 489 ; Old 
Pictures in Florence, 486- 
490 ; One Word More, 484 ; 
PaccJdarotto, 486 ; Pauline^ 
406, 485 ; personal traits, 
482, 484 ; Pippa Passes, 
483 ; Prospice, 496 ; Red 
Cotton Nightcap Country, 
486; **Rephan" in Aso^ 
lando, 495 ; The Ring and 
the Book, 485, 495 ; Saul, 
note, 484 ; Youth and Art, 
495 
Bruce, Robert, 307 
Bruges, Red Cross, Sign of 

the, 102 
Brunanburh, Song of, 44 
Brut, Layamon's, 56 
Bunyan, John, 169, 191 
Burbage, James, 139 
Burbage, Richard, 189 
Burke, Edmund, 265, 292 
and American Colonies 
294, 295; and Goldsmith 

292 ; Annual Register, 294 
as a man of letters, 298 
as a political thinker, 299 
biography and criticism 
300 ; death of his son, 297 
his career as an author, 

293 ; his conservatism, 296 
his death, 298 ; his life 
893: m Parliament, 294 



Letters on a Regicide Peace^ 
297 ; literature and politics, 
293 ; Philosophical Inquiry 
into the Origin of our Ideas 
of the Sublime and Beauti' 
ful^ A, 293 ; Reflections on 
the Revolution in France, 
297 ; Speech on Concilia- 
tion with America, 295 ; 
Speeches on America, 295 ; 
Study List, ^00 \ Thoughts 
on the Present Discontents, 
295 ; trial of Hastings, 296 ; 
Vindication of Natural 
Society, A, 293 

Burney, Frances, 446 ; Eve 
Una 446 

Burns,' Robert, 278, 300, 305, 
307, 453 ; at Edinburgh 

304 ; biography and criti 
cism, 308 ; Carlyle on, 302 ; 
Cottefs Saturday Night, 

305 ; Dumfriesshire, 304 ; 
life of, 300 ; love songs, 
305 ; poems, 307 ; songs, 
307-308 ; Study List, 307 ; 
sympathy with nature and 
animals, 307 ; Tam O' 
Shanter, 303 ; Wordsworth 
on, 301 

Butler, Bishop, 257 
Butler, Samuel, 191 
Byrhtnoth, Death of, 44 
Byron, Lord, 261, 306, 860, 
361, 406, 461, 474, 476; 
biography and criticism 
369 ; his death, 365 ; his 
marriage, 363 ; his work, 
criticism of, 865-868 ; life 
of, 861-865 ; list of works : 
Bride of Abydos, 867 ; Cain, 
364, 368 ; Childe Harold, 
261, 368, 864; Don Juan, 
364 ; English Bards and 
Scotch Revieicers, 368 ; 
Giaour, The, 363 ; Hours 
of Idleness, 362- Manfred 



i40 



mDEX. 



364 f Prisoner of Oh t lion, 
369 ; Vision of Judgment, 
366 ; Study List, 369 



Cabots, the, 103 

CadwalloD, 58 

Csedmon, 32, 34, 79 ; Crea- 
tion^ 47, 49 ; ParapJtrase of 
the Scriptures, 32, 35 ; 
storv of, 34 ; the Endaud 
of, 58 

Calais, 361 

Cambridge, 7, 175 ; King's 
College, 100 ; Queen's Col- 
lege, 100 

Campbell, Thomas, 399, 469 

Canterbury, 31, 70 ; Canter- 
bury Tales, Chaucer. 72, 
80, 81 ; prologue to, 81, 83- 
87. 93 ; school at, 31 

Canute. 61 

Carew, Thomas, 171, 173 

Carlvle. Thomas, 2, 310, 
368, 400. 406, 410, 432, 
453, 468, 492 ; Essays, 416 ; 
French ^Bevolution, 2, 419, 
422, 423 ; Heroes and Eero- 
WorsMp, 421 ; his life, 413- 
419 ; his style, 422-425 ; 
his work, 420 ; his works, 
416-425 ; Life of Croimcdl 
421 ; Life of Frederick the 
Great. 419 : Reminiscences, 
419 : Sartor Resartus, 413, 
415. 417 ; Study List, 498 

Castle. Baynnrd's, 113 

Catholicism. Roman. 107 

Caxton, William, 102 

Celt and Teuton, 50 ; union 
in Shakespeare, 20 

Celtic stock, 12, 17 ; humor, 
19 ; literature, 46, 67 ; love 
of nature, 19 ; poetry and 
legend, 17 ; romances, 18 

Celts, the, 12, 16, 17, 18, 20 



Cnamoers, Robert 46! 

Chambers, TVilliam, 401 

Chandos, Sir John, 70 

Chapman, 106, 169 

Charlemagne, early poems orl^ 
54 

Charles I., 165, 168, ISO 

Charles XL, 7. ISO. 191 

Charterton. Thomas, 279 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 10, 65. 66, 
68, 72, 79, 80, 81, 123 ; and 
his time, 93 ; biography 
and criticism, 98 ; dramatic 
power, 92 ; editions of, 97 : 
Ensiland of, 68; his cen- 
tury, 68, 70 ; his life, 74, 
75 : his verse, 73 ; his 
works, 78, 93 ; histoiy, 
manners, and customs, 9S : 
language, 98 ; lover of 
nature, 76 ; man of the 
world, 75 ; poet of the 
Court, 92 ; student, 76 ; 
Study List, 93 

Chivalry. 70 

Christianitv. Irish. 31 

Christ's Hospital. 324 

Chronicle, The, 43, 44, 46; 
Anglo-Norman, 53 ; Anglo- 
Saxon, 53 ; English, 57 

Chrysoloras, 101 

Church, the, 72 

Civil War, 170, 198 

Clarence, Lionel, Duke of, 
74 

Clarkson. 258 

Classic school, 279 

Cleopatra, 110 

Clerk, Oxford, Canterhjr^ 
Tales, 72, 76 

Clerics Tale, Chaucer, 88, 89, 
95 

Clive, 261 

Clouo:h, 461 

Cobb^ett. William. 400 

Cockermouth, 310 

Coleridge, Samuel Tajlor. 



INDEX. 



541 



278, 279, 329, 359, 361, 399, 
401, 406, 476; and Lamb, 
324 ; his death, 329 ; his 
life, 324-329 ; works : . n 
cient Mariner, 279,326 ; An- 
cient Mariner, criticism of, 
332 334 ; BiorjrapMa Lite- 
raria, 330 ; Ghristahel, 280, 
330 ; Kubla Khan, 331 ; 
Ode to France, 336 ; Wal- 
lenatein, 326 ; Youth and 
Age, 327 ; joius Words- 
worth, 326 ; poems of the 
supernatural, 336, 337 ; 
return to England, 326; 
Study List, 336; visit to 
Germany, 326 

Colet, John, 101, 162 

Colleges, foundation of, 100 

Collier, 198 

Collins, William, 271, 272, 
273 ; Odes„ 271. 272, 275 ; 
Swinburne on Ode to Ecen- 
ing, 273 

Columbus, 102 

Commerce, growth of, 108 

Complaint of Deor, 24, 25 

Comus, see Milton 

Consolations of Philosophy, 
Boethius, translated by 
Alfred, 43 ; translated by 
Chaucer, 76 

Constantinople, 101 

Copernicus, 103 

Corneille, 7, 192 

Corot, 273 

Courtly Makers, 105 

Coventry, 447 

Coverdale, 162 

Cowper, William, 306, 308; 
The Task, 271, 308 

Crabbe, George, 271, 277 

Craik, George L., 401 

Cranmer, 162 

Crashaw, Richard, 171 

Crecy, battle of, 71 

Cromwell, 165, 169. 191 



Cross, John Walter, 451 
Croyland, Abbey of, 42 
Cuckoo song, the, 62 
Cumberhmd, 310, 313 
Cuthbert, 47 
Cymri, the, 17 
CyndyUan, Lament for, 47 
Cynewulf, 37, 79; Cyne- 

wulf's Christ, 37, 38 ; 

Elene, The, 39, 59 

D 

Daily Courant, 200 

Danes, the, 12 ; coming of, 
41 

Daniel, Samuel, 128; Civil 
Wars, 128 

Dante, 72, 93, 424 ; Divine 
Comedy, 12 

Darwin, Charles, 264, 404, 
452 

Decamerone, the, 73, R2 

Defoe, Daniel, 200, 215, 450; 
as a novelist, 221 ; biog- 
raphy and criticism, 225; 
criticism on. 223 ; Daudet 
on, 222 ; death, 221 ; death 
of William III., 217; in- 
fluence of his death on 
Defoe's fortunes, 217; his 
fecundity, 220 ; his stories, 
criticism on, 222 ; his time, 
215 ; History of Colonel 
Jack, 1 he, 219 : interest in 
politics, 216 ; Journal of the 
Plague Year, The, 223 ; 
journalistic spirit, 220 ; 
Lamb on, 221 ; last years, 
221 ; Leslie Stephen on, 
221; life, 216; Life of 
Captain Singleton, Tlie, 
219; Memoirs of a Cavalier, 
The, 219; Mr. Minto on. 
221 ; Moll Flanders, 219 ; 
novels, 219 ; position of 
Dissenters, 217 ; Hcvi^w, 



549 



im>Ex 



200, 218 ; Bobinson Crusoe, 
219, 450 ; foundation for, 
220 ; Shortest Way with 
Dissenters, The, 218; Study 
List, 224 ; True Born Eng- 
lishman, 217 

Dekker, 169 

Democracy, advance of, 396 ; 
age of, 262 ; rise of, 281 

De Natura Eerzwi, Bede, 40 

De Quincey, Thomas, note, 
2, 346, 401, 435 ; a writer 
for magazines, 349 ; ap- 
pearance and character, 

846 ; as a man of letters, 
350 ; as an opium eater, 

847 , at Worcester College. 
Oxford, 348 ; biography 
and criticism, 355 ; com- 
pared to Addison, 351 ; 
Confessions of an English 
Opium Eater, 849, 353 ; 
death, 350 ; Bream- Fugue 
on the Theme f Sudden 
Death, 353 entrance into 
litera';ure, 349 • Flight of 
a Tartar Trii^., The, 352, 
353 • 'his diversity, 851 : 
his place in Ijinglish prose, 

352 ,Xs style, ^4:, Laocoon, 
translation of, 349 -, Levana 
and Our Ladies of Sorrow, 
352; life, 347; marriage, 
349 ; ITurder Considered as 
One of the Fine Arts, 352, 

353 ; Study List, 855 ; Sus^ 
piria de Profundis, 353 ; 
works, 353 

Devonshire, 324 

Dialed, East Midland, 64, 65; 

Northern. 64 ; Southern, 

64 
Dia-., 102 
Dickens, Charles, 406, 442, 

447, 453 ; early years, 441 ; 

works : Bleak House, 441 ; 

David Copperjleld, 441, 443 • 



Drood, 442 : LittU 
Dorrit, 441 ; OUve-^ Twist, 
441 ; Our Mutual Friend, 
441 ; Pickwick, 441 ; Tale 
of Two Cities, 443 

Divine Comedy, see Dante 

Don Quixote, 122 

Donne, Dr. John, 171 

Dowden, Edward, note, 2 

Drake, 111 

Drama, English, 106; before 
Shakespeare. 124 ; begin- 
ning of regular, 127 ; Eliza- 
bethan, preparation for, 
125 ; growth of, 127 

Drayton, Michael, 128 ; Bat- 
tle of Agincourt, 129 ; 
Heroical Epistles, 129 ; 
PolyoMon, The, 129, 469 

Dress, 109 

Drummond, William, 161 \ 
Sonnets, 161 

Drury Lane, 275 

Dryden, John, 194, 268, 271, 
273, 366, 496 ; Alexander's 
Feast, 196 ; and his time, 
197 ; as critic, 194 ; as satir- 
ist, 195; Essay on Dramatic 
Poetry, 194 ; The Hind and 
the Panther, 196 ; his power 
of reasoning in verse, 196 . 
lyrics, 196 ; Mac Flecknoe, 
196 ; The Medal, 196 
Mistress Anne Killegrew. 
196 ; Religio Laid, 196 , 
St, Cecilia's Day, Ode on, 
196 

Dumfriesshire, 804, 413 

Dunstan, 45 ; educational and 
monastic reformer, 46 

Durham Place, 113 

£ 

East India Company, 109 
East Midland English, $ei 
Dialect 



IHDBX. 



548 



Ecdefechan, 418 

Ecdmdsticai History^ Bede, 
43 

EdgehHl, 361 

Edge worth, Maria, 439; 
Absentee, The, 439; Castle 
Backrent, 439; Helen, 439 

Edinburgh, Journal, the, 400; 
Bevieio, the, 400 

Edington, battle of, 42 

Education Act, Foster, 402 

Edward II., Marlowe,129, 131 

Edward III., 64, 74, 78,311 

Edward VI., ^.07 

Edward the L ier, 45 

Eliot, George, 169, 343, 446; 
as a novelist. 452-458; 
assistant editor of West- 
minster Revieio, 449 \ life 
of, 446-451; Study List, 
499; works : Adam Bede^ 
448, 451; Daniel Beronda, 
452; Felix Holt, 456: Mid^ 
dlemarch, 456; Mill on the 
Floss, 448; Sad Fortunes of 
Bev, Amos Barton, 454; 
Scenes of Clerical Life, 450; 
Silas Marner, 458; Spanish 
Gypsy, 451 

Elizabeth, Queen, 1, 105, 107, 
110, 111, 116, 198 

Elizabethan literature, sum- 
mary of, 160 

Ely, Abbey of, 42; Song of 
the monks in, note, 61 

Emancipation Bill, 397 

England: coming of the New 
Learning to, 99; expansion 
of, 260, 281; language of, 
11; literature of, 11; men- 
tal life of, 11; modern, 263; 
of Elizabeth, 107; of Pope, 
454; f the Restoration, 
190- of Victoria, 395, 402, 
454; England, the romance 
in, 208; Amadis de Gaul, 
209; As Ton Like It, 210: 



Boccaccio 209; Elizabethan 
stories, general tone, 209, 
English prose, 209; Faerie 
Queens, The, 210; Faithful 
Shepherdess, The, 210, 
Faustus, 210; foreign 
romance in, 209; Green and 
Nash, 209- Lodge's Bosa* 
lind, 210; Lyly s Euphues, 
209; Mailory's Morte d' 
Arthur, 209* More's 
Utopia, 209, Norman Con- 
quest, 208, Paynter'o Fal 
ace of Fleasure, 209; 
reviva of learning 20£; 
Shakespeare, 209; Sidney's 
Arcadia 2m, 21^ Tempest. 
The, 210 trade with Arch- 
angel, 108; trade with 
Flanders, 108* trade with 
Guinea, 109; trade with 
Scandinavia, 108; England 
of Chaucer. 68 

English Pre-Raphaelite broth- 
erhood, 459 

English, the, 12, before the 
Norman Conquest, 21; 
description of early, 13; 
dialects, 64; during the 
modern English period, 8; 
during the period of French 
influence, 7; during the 
period of Italian influence, 
6; early home of, 13; early 
religious poems, 36; 
heathen element in early 
poems, 30; heathenism, 21; 
literature, period of prepa^ 
ration, 5, 9; mixture of 
races in, 12; mixture with 
Celt, 50; place of women 
among, 14; prose, Eliza- 
bethan, 154; prose, growth 
of, 44; race, making of the, 
12 ; religious instinct in, 
33; revival of English, 59; 
table of race, note, 12 



544 



mDMX. 



Enghis, Estoire des, 54 

Eostre, 22 

Epic, oldest English, 22 

Erasmus, 101, 162; Praise of 
Folly, 101 

Essay and the novel, 212; De 
Coverley compared to 
** Partridge " in Tom Jones, 
213; De Coverley papers, 
212; Defoe, 213, 246; 
Swift, 246 

Essays, eighteenth century, 
198 

Eton, 100 



Fable for Critics, 486 

Faorie Queened The. see Spen- 
ser 

Fairfax, 107 ; translated Je- 
rusalem Belimred, 107 

Fame, House of, 80 

Famou: Victories of Henry Y.^ 
12C 

Far Wanderer^ 24 

Farquhar, 2o9 

Fatali;m, primary English 
trait, 22 

Pate, ^30wer of, see Fatalism 

Fonelon, 192 

F&t^rex and Porrex, 105, 127 

Fielding, Henry, 250, 253; 
Adventures of JosepJi An- 
drews, The, 251 1 Byiron on, 
251 his literary form, 251 ; 
Richardson contrasted with, 
250 

Fight at Maldon the, 44 

Filostrato, Boccaccio, 80 

Fletcher, 169 \ The Faithful 
Shepherdess, 176 

Florence, 7, 101 

Foleshill, 447 

Ford, 169 

Fortunes of Mm, The, 15, 4? 

Fox. 265 



France, 192 

Frea, 21 

French, attention to literary 

form, 193 ; Influence, the, 

190, 192 
Frobisher, 111 
Froissart, Chronicles of the 

Hundred Years* War, 71 
Froude, 435 
Fuller, 165 

G 

Gaels, the, 17 
Gaimar, Geoffrey, 54, 55 
Gardiner, S. R.,435 
Garrick, 265, 274; in Bichard 

III., 275 
Garter, order of, 70 
Gaskell, ELzabeth, 440; Mary 

Barton, ^40 
Gaunt, John of, 75 
Gay, John, 242 ; Trivia, 269 
Gentleman's Magazine^ The, 

264 
Germany, 378 ; influence of, 

8 ; musi i in, 258 
Gesta R : lanorum, 67 
Oestes Chansons de, 49 
Gibbon, Edward, 265, 266; 

History of the Decline and 

Fall of the Boman Empire, 

266 
Gilbert, 111. 161 
Gleeman, 24 
Gloucester, Humphrey. Duk$ 

of, 100 
Oododin, The, 47 
Godwin, Mary, 372 
Godwin, William, 372 : Caleb 

Williams, 398, 439 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 265, 282 ; 

at school, 283 ; at Trinity 

College, 284 ; Bee, The, 288; 

biography and criticism, 

291 ; Citizen of the World, 

The, 284, 286, 288, 289] 



INDEX. 



84d 



compared to Pope, 289; 

death, 287 ; The Deserted 
Village, 271, 276, 277, 283, 
284, 286, 287, 289, 290 ; Dr. 
Johnson on, 286 ; Edin- 
burgh and the Continent, 
284 ; Enquiry into the State 
qf Polite Learning in Eu^ 
ropey 285 ; Good-natured 
Man, The, 286, 288 ; The 
Hermit, 279; his character, 
282 ; his epitaph, 286 ; his 
place in literary hfetory. 
288 ; his work, 287 ; in Ire 
land, 282 ; in London, 285 
life, 282; Scott on, 289 
She Stoops to Conquer. 286, 
288; Study List, '291* 
Thackeray on, 282; the 
Literary Club, 286; Trav- 
eller, The, 271, 285, 286, 
289 ; Vicar of Wakefield, 
The, 283, 284, 286, 288, 289 

Good Counseil, Chaucer, 97 

Gm^oduc, 105, 127 

Gordon, Catherine, 362 

Gospel of St, John^ English 
translation of, 40 

Gower, John, 65, 78 

Grasmere, 313 

Grave, TJie, 15, 47 

Gray, Thomas, 271 ; Elegy in 
a Country Churchyard, 271, 
276 

Greece, 106 

Greek, in England, 31 ; life 
and literature, 101 

Greeks, 279 

Green, J. R.,435; note, 20 

Greene, Robert, 129 ; Honor- 
able History of Friar Bacon 
and FiHar Bungay, 130 

Gregory the Great, Pastoral 
Care, 43 

Grendel, 26 

Gresham, Sir Thomas, 109 

Grey. Lord 118. 121 



Griff House, 447 

Grimbald, 42 

Grocyn, William, 101. 162 
Guardian, The, 204 
Guesclin, Bertrand du, 71 
Gunpowder, first used in 

Europe, 71 
Guthlac, the, 37 
Guy of Gisborne, note, 62 

H 

Hadrian, 31 

Hakluyt, 161 ; Voyages, 161 

Hallam, Arthur, 467 ; death 
of, 467, 468 

Hamlet, 186 

Hampden, 169 

Hargreaves, 301 

Harold, 50 

Harrington, 107 

Harrison, Frederic, 280; Es- 
say on the Nineteenth Cen* 
tury, 280 

Harvey, Gabriel, 117 

Hastings, battle of, 50 

Hathaway, Ann, 136, 138 

Hawkins, 111 

Hazlitt, 399, 401 

Heart of Midlothian, 844 

Henry IL, 61 

Henry HL, 59, 63 

Henry IV., 75 

HeurvYL, 100 

Henry YIL, 102 

Henry VIIL, 103, 104, 126 

Henry Esmond, 343 

Heorot. 26 

Herbert, George, 171 

Herrick, Robert, 3, 171 ; and 
Milton, 173 ; description of 
his verse, 172 

Hey wood, John, 126 ; Inter' 
hides, 126, 162 

^olinshed, 128 ; Desmption 
and History of England^ 
Scotland, and Ireland, 128 



546 



INDEX. 



Holy Alliance, the, 860 

Homer, 106 

Hooker, Richard, 155, 198; 
Ecclesiastical Polity, 155 

Horace, 3 

Howard, Henrv, Earl of Sur- 
rey, 104, 105 

Howard, John, 258 

Hiothgar, 26 

Hudibras, Butler's, 191, 486 

Hugo, Victor, 278 

Hume, David, 266 

Hundred Tears' War, the, 64 ; 
Chronicles of, 71. 

Huntingdon, Abbey of, 42 

Huntingdon, Henry of, 53 

Hutchinson, Mary, 313 



Hissus, 307 

India, 261, 409 

Industrial and social changes, 
261 

Interludes, 126, 132 

lona, Irish mission station at. 
31 

Ireland, Spenser in, 118 

Isabella, 184 

Isembras, Sir, 69 

Isolde, see Tristram 

Italian influence, period of, 
99, 105 

Italy, 101, 106, 176, 409, 484 ; 
influence of, 8 ; New Learn- 
ing of, 73 ; situation of, 
107 ; see also, Benaissance 

Ivanhoe, 344 



James I, 7, 116, 1^8 
Jarrow, Monastery of, 32 
John, reign of, 57, 63 
■^Dhnson, Samuel, 263 ; as a 
satirist, 267; death, 265; 



English Dictionary, 265 j 
his life, 264; his works, 
265; The Idler, 265; in 
London, 264 ; Lives of the 
Poets, 267; London, 267; 
personal peculiarities, ^5 ; 
poems, 275 ; The PambUr, 
265, 267 ; Bassdas, 267 ; 
the prose writer of an age 
of prose, 266 ; Vanity of 
Human Wishes, The, 267, 
275 

Jongleur, 69 

Jonson, Ben, 112, 170 ; de- 
cline of the drama, 170 ; 
Emry Man in his JHumor, 
169 

Judith, 37 

Juliana, The, 37 

Jutes, The, 13 

K 

Keats, John, 378, 406, 458; 
as a master of form, 387 ; 
as a poet, 386 ; at Enfield, 
379 ; biography and criti- 
cism, 394 ; Bvron and 
Shelley, 378; death, 385; 
Em of St. Agnes, The, 385, 
387 ; Endymion, 383 ; 
Endymion and its critics, 
383 ; friendship of Charles 
Cowden Clarke, 380 ; his 
love and ill-health, 385 ; his 
place as a poet, 388 ; his 
rapid development, 384 ; 
Hyperion, 385 ; La Belle 
Dame sans Merci, 388 ; 
Lamia, 390 ; Leigh Hunt, 
382; life, 379; list of 
poems, 392 ; Ode on a 
Grecian TIrn, 385 ; poetic 
limitations, 391 ; settles in 
London, 382 ; Study List. 
392 ; theory of poetry. 389 

Kemble, John, 275 



INDEX 



S47 



Kenilwortii, Castle of, 110, 

137 
Kent, Church in, 30 
Keswick, 326 
King John, 115 
Kinglake, 485 
King's College, 100 
Kingsley, Charles. 398, 432, 

440 ; Alton Locke, 440 
Kilcolman, Castle of, 118, 

123 
Knight, Charles, 401 
KnigMs Tale, account of, 87, 

94 
Knowledge, general diffusion 

of, 396 
Kyd, Thomas, 129 ; Spanish 

Tragedy, The, 129 



Lake School, 278 

Lamb, Charles, 356, 399, 
401 ; and Wordsworth, 
357 ; as critic and poet, 359 ; 
biography and criticism, 
359 ; Essays of Elia, 358 ; his 
sister's insanity, 356 ; John 
Woodvil, 357; life, 357; 

Mr, H , 357 ; Specimens 

of English Dramatic Poets, 
358; Study List, 358; 
Tales Founded on the Plays 
of Slmkespeare, 358 ; works, 
357 

Lancaster, Duke of, see Gaunt, 
John of 

Lancelot, 55 

Landor, Walter Savage, 401, 
485 

Lanfranc, 49, 52 

Langland, William, 73, 98; 
Piers Plo^cman, 805 

Language, English and Nor- 
man, 51 ; making of the, 
63 ; triumph of, 51 

Latin, 49, 65 ; writers, the, 51 



Laud, Archbisixcrp, 158 

Laura, 73 

Layamon, Brut, 56, 67 ; ao 
count of, 58, 59 

Lear, King, 58 

Learning, revival of, 99 
under Alfred, 42 ; the new, 
100 

Leicester, Earl of, 118 

Leopardi, 474 

Lewes, George Henry, 449 

Life, splendor of, 109 

Linacre, Thomas, 101, 162 

Lincolnshire, 464, 465 

Literature, after Pope, 263 ; 
after the Conquest, 57; 
birthplace of, 32 ; criticism 
and history of, 48 ; defini- 
tion of, 1 ; Elizabethan, 
105 ; general diffusion of, 
396; its permanence and 
universality, 2 ; of the 
people, 60 ; old French, 66 ; 
rise of periodical, 200 ; 
Victorian era in, 404 

Lives of^he Saints, 40 

Locrine, 58 

London, 65, 69, 75, 106, 107, 
108 ; a walled town, 112 ; 
Bridge, 114 ; literary circles 
in eighteenth century, 264 ; 
London Quarterly, the, 
400 ; of Shakespeare, 112, 
113; Royal Exchange in, 109 

Longfellow, 77 

Lorris, Guillaume de, 79 

Louis X^V., 7, 192 

Lovelace Richard, 171 

Lowell, Tames Russell, 76, 
81 ; on Pope, 272 

Lucretius 474 

Lucy, Sir Thomas, 138 

Luther, Martin, 103 

Lycidas, t 73 

Lyell, Sir Charles, Principle 
of Geolmm, 404 

Lyly, JohA ^^9, 155 



54% 



IKDEX= 



MoJbinogion, Guest's, 19, 20, 

47 ; The Boys', 47 
Macauiay, Thomas Babins:- 

tOD, 265, 406, 407, 434; 

Essays, 2, 409; Ms life, 

407-409 ; his works, 409- 

411 ; History of England, 

410 
3Iachault, Guillaume de, 79 
Macklin, 275 
Macpherson, James, Ossiaii, 

279 
Maldon, Fight at, 44 
Malmesburj, Monastery of, 

32 
Malmesbiiry, "VTilliam of, 53 
Malorv, Sir Thomas, Morte 

d' Arthur, 102, 154 
Man of Lawe's Tale, 88-90, 

97 
Manchester, 360, 440 
Map, Walter, 55 
Marlowe, Christopher, 105, 

129, 130, 131 ; Edward IE, 

129, 131 ; Faustus, 131 ; 

Jew of Malta, The, 131 ; 

Tariihurlaine, 131, 139 
Marston, 169 
Martineau, Harriet, 449 
Martin eau, James, 449 
Marr. Queen of Scots, 108 ; 

reign of, 108, 121 
Massmger, 169 
Master^ of Ballantrae, The, 

343 
Maurice, Fredenc Denison, 

398, 432, 465 
Maypoles, 172, 191 
Mazarin, 192 
Medici, Lorenzo de, 101 
Mediterranean, English trade, 

108 
Merlin, 55 

Mermaid Tavern, US 
MetterDich, 860 



Mickle, 279 : Mannef^ Tife 
279 ' 

Middle Ages, 72 

Millet, 273 

Milton, John, 110, 173, 174. 
176, 190,318, 489,496; and 
Shakespeare, 186 ; Areo. 
2jagitica, 3, 179 ; at Christ's 
College, 175 ; at Horton, 
175 ; biography and criti= 
cism, 188; boyhood, 174; 
Comus, 90, 176; Epitaphiura 
Bariionis, 179 ; his ideal of 
life, 183 ; H Penseroso, 175, 
187; L' Allegro, 175, 187 ; 
later poetic period, 180 ; 
life, 175-186 ; Lycidas, 178. 
187 ; Massous life of, 176 ; 
On the Death of a Fair 
Infant Dying of a Cough, 
175 ; Paradise Lost, 105, 
179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 187, 
271 ; Paradise Regained, 
105, 182, 185 ; prose works, 
179 ; Psalms, Paraphrase of , 
174 ; religious and political 
liberty of his time, 167 ; 
return to England, 179 ; 
Samson Agonisies. 182, 184, 
187 ; Study List, 187 ; Ten. 
nre of Kings and Magis- 
trates, The, 180; the Eng- 
land of, 164 ; Tractate on 
Education, 179; travels, 178 

Minot, Lawrence, 67 

Minshull. Elizabeth, 183 

Minstrel, 69 

Miracle plavs, 126 

Moliere, 4, 192 

Monasteries, destruction of, 
at Jarrow, 42 ; atHolvIsle, 
42 

3Ionastic schools, rise of, 31 

ilonmouth, Geoffrey of, 55 ; 
History of Britain, 79 

Moore, thbmas, 360; LaUa 
Rookh, 361 



INDEX. 



549 



\Ioral plays, 126 

More, Sir Thomas, 101, 106, 
128, 162 ; History of Riclu 
ard III., 101, 154 ; Utopia, 
101 

Morley, Henry, 497 

Morris, William, 460; Earthly 
Paradise, 2 he, 460 ; Life 
and Death of Jason, 460 

Morte d' Arthur, see Malory 

Mother Hubbard's Tale, 119 

Mythology, Teutonic, 21 

N 

Napoleon, 859 

National pride, 115 

Neic History of King Leir, 

The, 128 
New Learning, the, 7, 72 
Newspapers, 399 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 197 
New World, disco Fery of, 

102 
Novel, history of the, 207, 
246 ; Beowulf, 208 ; Defoe' 
207, 246 -, drama, Eliza- 
bethan, 207; English fic- 
tion, e!irly histoi^^ 208 
Fielding, 207, 246 • growth 
of the, 489 i Ita'ian, 106 . 
lUady 208 ; medigeval ro- 
mance, 208 ; Odyssey, 208 
of domestic life, 246 
origin of, 208 ; Richardson 
207, 246 ; Study Lists, 214' 
252 ; Swift, 246 
Nonne Prestes Tale, The, 97 
North, Sir Thomas, transla- 
tion of Plutarch's Lives, 107 
Northumbria, 31, 33; Caed- 
mon and Bede in, 33 ; home 
of Cynewulf, 33 ; literary 
supremacy of, 83 of 
Alcuin, 33 
Norton. 105 



Normandy, loss of, 63 
Normans, the, 12 ; account 
of, 48-50; chivalry, 49; 
from Alfred to, 45 ; in- 
fluence of, 48, 65 ; inter- 
marriages, 50 ; Norman 
architecture, 49 ; Norman 
Conquest, 6 ; their adapta- 
bility, 50 ; their civiliza- 
tion, 50 ; their effect on 
language, 49 ; their poets, 
49 
Nuneaton, 447 



Odericus Yitalis, 53 
(Edipus at Colonus, 3 
Old Mortality, 344 
Oliphant, Margaret, 440 ; 

Chronicles of Carlingford, 

440 
Omar Khayyam, 2 
Orient, 261 
Orlando Furioso, 107 
Ormulum, 60 
Orr, Mrs., 482 
Ovid, 79, 106 ; Metamor. 

phoses, 106 
Owen, Robert, 398 
Oxford 7,100 



Padua, 101 

Paradise Lost, see Milton, 

John 
Paris, Matthew, 53 
Parliament, 64, 397 
Pascal, 192 
Pater, Walter. 435 
Peele, Greorge, 129 ; Edward 

/., 129 
Penny Magazine, The, 401 
Penshurst, 117 
People, pro«perity^f, 108 
Fsrcr, Binhop, 279; Heli^ua 



650 



INDEX, 



of Ancient English Poetry, 
279 
Peterborou2:li, Abbev of, 42 
Petrarch. 72, 75, 80/l04 
Philippa, Queen, 78 
Philosophers, Dictes and. Say- 
ings of. 102 
Picodi Mirandola, life of, 106 
Piers Ploicrnanj Vision of, 

Pitt. William, 258, 259, 260, 
262 

Plaiitao-enet, 63 

Plassev. 261 

Plato, ^106 

Poems, Anglo-Latin, ^^ 

Poet, the, in Early English, 
23 

Poetry, 22 ; Anglo -Xor man, 
53 i Xorman-French, re- 
lation to En2^1ish Litera- 
ture, o-i ; of Doubt, 461 ; 
of Evasion, 459 ; of Faith 
and Hope, 4^2 ; popular, 
60 ; recent, 45S 

PolyoVbion, see Dravton 

Pope, Alexander,' 103, 235, 
243, 263, 273, 275, 366 ; at 
Twickei^iam, 241 ; biog- 
raphy and criticism, 245 ; 
Bunciad, The, 242, 243; 
Essay on Criticism . 236 ; 
Essay on Man, 242, 243, 
245. 264 ; Iliad, The, trans- 
lation of, 242; life of, 235; 
Messiah, TJie, 237 ; meter, 
272 ; Odyssey, The, transla- 
tion of, 242 ; Pastorals, The, 
236 ; Puipe of the Lock, The, 
237, 239, 244, 245, 264; 
short poems, 245 ; Study 
List, 245 ; Windsor Eorest, 
237, 240, 241 

Pope, the, 72 

Portia, 184 

PoAvell, Mary. 180 

piintmg'. 102 



Protestantism, 107 
Prynne, 198 

Psalms, translations of, 87 
Psalter, The, versions of, 5': 
Puritan, the, 109, 170; In 

literature, 164 
Puttenham. 155 ; Art oj 

English Poesie, 155 
Pym, 169 



Quarles, Francis, 171 
Quebec, 261 
Queen, loyalty to. 116 
Queen's College, 100 
Quin, 275 

R 

Racedown, 312 

Racine, 7, 192 

Railroad, Liverpool and Man- 
chester, 403 

Raleigh, Sir T^'alter. Ill, 112, 
118. 198 ; History of the 
World, 158 

Ramsav, Allan, 270 ; Gentle 
Shepherd, Ihe, 270 

Re-birth, see Renaissance 

Ecdcauntlet, 344 

Reform Bill, 397, 401, 476 

Reformation, the, 72, 74, 103, 
104. 166 

Reign of Terror, 359 

Religious persecution, free- 
dom from, 107 

Renaissance, 6, 70. 99-104. 
116, 165, 176, 262, 280; 
Italian, 109, 123: "The 
Renaissance of Wonder," 
460 

Restoration, 170 ; chan£:es 
at, 191 

Revival of Learning, 165 

Revolution, age of, /32, 
French, see Carljle ; -atei 
i»etf of %f^ 



IKDKX 



551 



Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 265 

Rhyming Ghronicle-. note, 64 
Hialto, 109 
Richard II., 75 
Richardson, Samuel, 247, 252; 
Glarissa Harlowe, 249 ; 
critics on, 250 ; Dr. John- 
son on, 249 ; facility in 
letter-writing, 248 ; his 
novels, 249 ; Pamela, or 
Virtue Rewarded, 247, 249, 
439; Sir Charles Grandi- 
son, 249 ; his understanding 
of women, 248 

Richelieu, 192 

Robert of Gloucester, Rhyijir 
ing Ghronicle, note, 64 

Robertson, William, 266 

Bobin Hood, 61, 62 ; song of, 
62 

Robinson, Henry Crabbe, 
Diary of, 329 

Roland, Song of, 53 

Romance, after the Restora- 
tion, 211 ; Ben Jonson's, 
Cynthia's Bevels, 212 ; 
Cycles of, 54 ; during 
seventeenth century, 210 ; 
French romances, 210 ; 
Joseph Hall and John Earle, 
212; Jusserand, 210 ; Nash 
forerunner of realistic nov- 
elists, 211 ; Overbury*s 
Characters, 212 ; Romance 
of the Rose, 79 

Romanists, 397 

Romantic Middle Age, the, 
50 

Romantic School, 278, 279; 
definition of, 278 

Rome, 72, 106 ; Church of, 
196 

Romola, 343 

Roses, Wars of the, 100 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 459, 
483 ; his poetry, 460 ; Bal- 
lad vf the White Ship The, 



460 ; Blessed Damozei, The, 
460; King's Tragedy, Tlie, 
460 ; Rose Mary, 460 

Round Table, Knights of, 
se^ Arthur ; Wace's poem 
on, 55 

Rousseau, 262, 424 

Royal Society, 197 

Ruskin, John, 336, 398, 406, 
452, 461 ; account of, 425- 
435 ; and Carlyle, 425 ; and 
Keats, 425 ; and Words- 
worth, 425 ; as a teacher, 
429 ; as social reformer, 
431 ; Croicn of Wild Olive, 
433 ; descriptions of nature, 
426-428; Fors Clarigera, 
433 ; Modern Painters, 429 ; 
principles of art, 428 ; Se* 
same and Lilies, note, 178 ; 
Seven lamps of Architecture, 
430 ; Stones of Venice, 430 ; 
Study List, 498 ; Time and 
Tide, 433 ; Unto this Last, 
433 

Rydal Mount, 818 



Sackville, 105 : Gorhoduc, or 

Ferrex and Porrex, 127 ; 

Mirror for Magistrates, 106 
St. Augustine, 30 
St. Paul, Grammar School 

of, 101, 162, 166, 174 
St. Peter and St. Paul, 

schools of, 32 
Sainte Beuve, 278 
Sax neat, 21 
Saxons, 13 
School, critical, 194 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 8(11 
Science, the advance of, 

396, 402 
Scop, 23 
Scott, Sir Walter, 278, 280. 

807, 338, 416; biography 



552 



INDEX. 



and criticism, 346 ; Abbot, 
The, power of, 343; and 
the historical novel, 342 ; 
as a novelist, 842 ; as a 
poet, 341 ; his life, 838- 
340 ; his works, 340 ; Keiiil^ 
worthy scenes in, 843 ; Lady 
of the Lake, The, 341 ; Lay 
of the Last Minstrel, The, 
340 ; Marmion, 841 ; poems, 
345; Rokeby, 342; Study 
List, 345 ; summary, 345 ; 
Waverley Novels, 345 
Seorfarer, The, 16, 37, 47 
Sellwood, Emily, 470 
Seneca, plays of, 106 
Shaftesbury, 195 
Shadwell, 196 

Shakespeare, William, 91, 
105,108, 112, 170, 274, 453, 
485, 489 ; and Chaucer, 
143 : and the drama, 125 ; 
Carlyle on, 124; Classical 
Plays : Antony and Cleo- 
patra, 107 ; note, 803 ; 
Coriolanus, 107 ; Julius 
Cmsar,^ 107, 142 ; Julius 
Cmsar," special study of, 
153 ; Timon of Athens, 
107 ; Titus Andronicus, 
140 ; Comedies : As You 
Like Lt, 136, 187 ; Comedy 
of Errors, 140 ; Love's 
Ldbofs Lost, 140 ; Measure 
for Measure, 145 ; Merchant 
of Venice, The, 140, 145; 
Midsummer Nights Dream, 
141, 146; Twelfth Night, 
308; Two Gentleman of 
Verona, 140 ; Winter's 
Tale, The, 137, 146 ; editions 
of, 149 ; JEmerson on, 124 ; 
French and Italian studies, 
139 ; general notes and 
references, 150 ; general 
suggestions for Study, 150 ; 
^ftmm^-m. kjiicons, biog- 



raphy, criticisms, etc., 149; 
Greene's reference to, 180 i 
his predecessors, 129 ; His- 
torical; Henry V, 138, 144; 
Henry VL, 140, Richard 
LL, 141; in London, 138, 
189 ; Jonson, Ben, on, 188; 
life of, 135; love of the 
country, 187 ; part of the 
dramatic period, 125 ; 
Poems : Venus and Adonis, 
140 ; Study List, 149-154 ; 
Tragedies : Lear, 144 ; Mac- 
beth, 142 ; MoAibeth, special 
study of, 152 ; Othello, 
143 ; Romeo and Juliet, 142; 
uniting Celt and Teuton, 
20 ; works, table of, 148 

Sharp, 482 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 860, 
869, 406, 426, 476 ; Adonais, 
377; Alastor, 372, 877; 
biography and criticism, 
377, 378; departure for 
Continent, 374 ; England in 
1819, 375 ; Epipsychidion, 

375 ; expelled from Oxford, 
871 ; Hellas, 374 ; his death, 
375; life and works, 370- 

376 ; marriage, 871 ; Masque 
of Anarchy, 375 ; Pro^ 
metheus Unbound, 378 ; 
Queen Mab, 372 ; Revolt of 
Lslam, 373 ; second mar- 
riage, 372; Sensitive Plant, 
The, 377; shorter poems, 
877 ; Song of Men of Eng- 
land, 875 ; Study List, 877 

Shenstone, 272, 279 ; Jemmy 

Dawson, 279 ; SchoolmiS' 

tress, 272 
Sheridan, 265 
Shottery, 136 
Siddons, Mrs., 275; in Lady 

Macbeth, 275 ; Id Queen 

Katherine, 275 
Sidney, Sir Philip. 117, lUi 



INDEX. 



553 



Arcadia, 155 ; Defense of 
Poesy y 155 ; Sonnets, 161 

Smiles, 401 

Smith, Adam, Wealth of 
Nations, 267 

Smithfield, 112 

Smollett, Tobias George, 252, 
254 ; fiction, realistic school 
of, 252 ; Fielding's, Tom 
Jones, 252 ; Roderick Ban- 
dom, 252 ; Walpole's, 
Castle of OtrantOj 252 

Snittertield, 135 

Socialism, 71 

Somerset House, 113 

Songs, in Early England, at 

Sonnets', 120, 161, 317, 484 
SouVs Complaint against the 

Body, The, 47 
Southampton, Earl of, 140 
Southey, Robert, 261, 278, 
^01, 406 ; Curse of Kehama, 
261 
Spectator, The, 200, 204, 265, 

400 ; papers in, 205 
Spedding. James, 465 
6pencer, Herbert, 449, 452 
plpenser, Edmund, 99. 117, 
176; Amoretti, 120; and 
Raleigh, 118 ; Arcadia, 
118 ; as poet, 121 ; at Kil- 
colman, 118 ; at Pembroke 
College, 117 ; at Penshurst, 
117 ; biography and criti- 
cism, 123^124 ; death, 121 ; 
Epithalamion, 120 ; Faerie 
queene. The, 88, 112, 119, 
i20, 121, 122, 123; first 
poems, 117 ; life of, 117 ; 
marriage, 120 ; Mother 
Euhhard's Tale, 119 ; Pro- 
%alamion, 120 ; secretary 
co Lord Grey, 118; Shep- 
herds Calendar, 117 ; Study 
List, 123 
Steele Richard, 201 ; Addi- 



son and, 206 ; Christian 
Hero, 203 ; Funeral, The, 
203; Gazette, The, 204; 
Study List, 206 ; Tatler 
The, 204; Thackeray on, 
201 

Sterne, 254 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 343 

Stowe, 128 

Strand, The, 114 

Stratford on Avon, 135, 136, 
137, 141 

Stuarts, rule of, 168 

Stud}^ Lists : Addison and 
Steele, 206 ; Arnold, Mat- 
thew, 499 ; Browning, 502 ; 
Burke, Edmund, 300 ; 
Burns, 307; Byron, 369; 
CarlylG, 498 ; Chaucer and 
his Time, 93 ; Coleridge, 
336; Defoe, 224; De 
Quincey, Thomas, 355 ; 
Eliot, George, 499 ; From 
earliest times to Norman 
Conquest, 46 ; Goldsmith, 
291; Keats, John, 392; 
Lamb, 358 ; Macaulay, 
497 ; Milton, 187 ; Norman 
Conquest lo Chaucer, 66 ; 
Novel, History of the, 214, 
252 ; Pope, 245 ; Ruskin, 
498 ; Scott, 345 ; Shakes- 
peare, 149; Shelley, 377; 
Spenser, 123 ; Swift, 233 ; 
Tennyson, 500 ; Words- 
worth, 319 

Style, 3 

Suckling, Sir John, 171 

Swift, Jonathan, 225, 242, 
276 ; as a satirist, 226 ; 
Battle of the Books, The, 
227, 228; biography and 
criticism, 233 , closing 
years, 232 ; compared to 
Goldsmith, 225 ; criticism 
on, 227, 228 ; death, 233 ; 
Thackeray on bis death, 



554 



INDEX. 



233 ; Dr. Johnson on, 229 ; 
enters the Church, 226 ; 

Epistles of Phalaris^ The, 
228 ; Gullivefs Travels, 
231, 276 ; criticism on, 231 ; 
compared to Robinson 
Crusoe^ 232; Harley and 
Bolingbroke, 229 ; his 
character, 225 ; inclination 
for politics, 226 ; Journal to 
Stella, 229 ; Laracor, 229 ; 
political reverses, 230 ; St. 
Patrick's, Dublin, 230 ; 
Study List, 233 ; Tale of a 
Tub, The, 227; Temple, 

^ death of, 229 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 
459 ; Atalanta in Calydon^ 
459 



Tabard Inn, 82, 83 

Talisman, The, 344 

Tasso, 106, 107, 120 

Tatler, The, 200. 265 

Taylor, Bayard, 482 

Taylor, Jeremy, 155 

Telegraph first used in Eng- 
land, 125, 403 

Temple, The, 113 

Teniers, 489 

Tennyson, Alfred, 10, 408. 
433, 458, 462, 488, 492; 
Ancient Sage, Ihe, 472 ; 
and Browning, 464 ; and 
Dante, 473 ; and Milton, 
463, 473 ; as a poet of 
nature, 474 ; as a teacher, 

501 ; at Trinity College, 
465 ; Aylmefs Field, 477 ; 
biography and criticism, 

502 ; Gharge of the Light 
Brigade, 469 ; Coming of 
Arthur, The, 477 ; Demeier, 
472 ; De Profundis, 471 ; 
Dora, 469 ; Enoch Arden, 
469 ; epic and dramatic 



poetry, 471 ; friendship 
with A. H. Hallam, 466; 
Galahad, 469 ; Gardener's 
Daughter, The, 469 ; Gareth 
and Lynette, 477 ; grammar 
school at Lowth, 465 ; 
Guinevere, 479 ; his death, 
472; his style, 473; his 
w^ork, 472 ; home at Far- 
ringford, 470 ; home train- 
ing, 464 ; Idylls of the King, 
102, 469,471, 50f; criticism 
of,^ 477-481; in Lincoln- 
shire, 464 ; In Meinoriam, 
480, 501 ; Last Tournament^ 
The, 478 ; life, 464 ; Locks^ 
ley Hall, 468, 469, 471, 477; 
Lotos Eaters, The, 489; 
Lucretius, 469 ; marriage, 
470 ; Maud, 469, 475, 477 ; 
natural descriptions, 500 ; 
Ilorthern Farmer, 469 r 
Passing of Arthur, The, 
479 ; Poems, Chiefly Lyrical^ 
406 ; poems with his 
brother Charles, 466 ; Poet 
Laureate, 470 ; poet of 
man, 476 ; poet of modern 
science, 475 ; Princess, The, 
477 ; prize poem Timhiic- 
too, 466 ; Queeii Mary, 471 ; 
Bevenge, The, 469 ; scientific 
view of nature, 474 ; Study 
List, 500 ; studv of works, 
500 ; Stylites, 469 ; the poet 
of art, 473 : theorv of art, 
500 ; Tico Voices, The, 468 ; 
Voyage of Moeldune, 469 

Testament, the IS'ew, 101 

Teutons, the, 17 

Thackerav, TVilliam Make- 
peace, 343, 406, 443; at 
Cambridge, 443 ; English 
Humorists, 445 ; Henr'^ 
Esmond, 445 ; Pendenni^i^ 
444 ; Vanity Fair^ 443 
444 r Virginians^ The 4A^ 



INDEX 



556 



Thames, the. 114 

Theaters : Blackf riars, 183 ; 
Curtain, The, 132 ; Fortune, 
The, 132 ; Globe, The, 132, 
141 ; Rose, The, 132 ; thea- 
ters, the early, 132 ; thea- 
ters^ Mr. Symouda on, 
134 

Theodore of Tarsus. 31 

Thompson, James, 258, 270, 
273, 275 ; Castle of Indo- 
lence, The, 272 ; Seasons, 
The, 270, 272, 275 

Thompson, James (the latter), 
461 ; City of Dreadful 
Night, The, A61 ; He Heard 
her Sing, 462; Sunday at 
Hampstead, 462 ; Sunday 
up the Biver, 462 

Thor, 21 

Tiber, the, 307 

Tiptof t, John, Earl of Worces- 
ter, 102 

Tiw, 21 

Totters Miscellanies of Uiu 
certain Authors, 105 

Tourneur, Cyril, 170 

Translators, work of, 106 

Trench, R. C, 466 

Tristram, 55 

Troilus and Cressida, 79 

Trouolesome Baign of King 
John, The, 128 

Troy, Tale of, 69 

Tyndale, 103; translation of 
the Bible, 103, 154 



Udall, Nicholas, 127; BdJilph 
Bolster Doister, 127 



Vasco di Gama, 102 
Vaughan, Henry, 17? 
Venice, 106, 114 



Vergil, 79, 162 ^ 
Verona, see Venice 
Vitelli, Cornelius, 101 

W 

Wace, 55 

Wales, The Four Ancieni 

Books of, 47 
Wallace, Alfred R., 404 
Wallace, William, 807 
Waller, Edmund, 193 
Walpole, Horace, 259, 260, 

261, 263 
Wanderer, The, 15 
Ward, Mrs., Marcella, 398 
Warner, William, 128; Al 

bion's England, 128 
Warwick, 137 
Warwickshire, 135, 136, 137, 

447 
Waterloo, battle of, 360 
Watt, 281 

Watts, Theodore, 460 
Webster, 169 ; Duchesu oj 

Malfi, 169 ; Vittoria Corora* 

bona, 169 
Wedmore, treaty of, 42, 45 
Weekly Begister, The, 400 
Wesley, John, 262 
Westminster Beview, The, 400 
Whitby, Monastery of. 32 
Widsith, 24 
Wife of Bath, 91 
Wilberforce, 258 
Wilkes, 281 
William III., 204 
William IV, 397 
Windsor, 175 
Wither, 191 
Woden, 21 

Wolfe at Quebec, 261 
Woodcock, Katherine, 180 
Wordsworth, William, 263, 

278, 279, 308, 310, 386, 359, 

360, 361,367,401,406,433, 

469. 475, 488, 492; An 



556 



IN^BEXL 



I 



Everdnj Walk, 312; and 
Coleridge, 812; and the 
French Revohition, 309; 
as a poet, 313; as poet 
of democracy, 318; at 
Alfoxden, 312; at Hawkes- 
head School, 311; beauty 
of his life, 317; biography 
and criticism, 323; death, 
313; Descriptive Sketclies, 
312; first venture in poetry, 
312; his sister Dorothy, 
312; his teaching, 315; in 
London, 311; life, 310-313; 
limitations of his view of 
nature, 316; lyrical, 323; 
Lyrical Ballads, 312; mar- 
riage, 313; Matthew Arnold 
on, 318; narrative poems, 
B23: odes, 318, 319, 322; on 



the Continent, 311; Poe> 
Laureate, 313; Racedown, 
312; Raisley Calvert, 312; 
return to England, 311; 
Rydal Mount, 313; sonnets, 
323; Study List, 319; sus- 
ceptibility to natural 
beauty, 311; sympathy 
with French Revolution. 
311 

Wyatt, Thomas, 104, 105 

Wycherley, 259 

Wycxif, John. 65, ?3, 74 
100 

Wyrd, 22 

Y 

York House, 113 

Young, Mght Thoughts, 26S 



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